Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni named skippers of CA's Test and ODI teams of the decade
Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni have been named the captains of Cricket Australia's Test XI and ODI XI of the decade respectively. This comes as little surprise as the duo have been extremely crucial for India in the past decade in the two formats.
Virat Kohli has made sure this modern Indian team is capable of competing with any team in their own den and his fitness regime has ensured India's pace bowling attack is one of the most feared attacks in the world. Kohli has also become the most successful Indian Test captain with a win percentage better than that of former captains MS Dhoni and Sourav Ganguly.
He continues to lead by example with the bat and has scored 21,444 runs across all three formats with an average over 50 in each one of them and is the third-highest run-scorer of all time behind Ricky Ponting and Sachin Tendulkar. He also has 70 international hundreds, which is the third most ever after Ponting (71) and Tendulkar (100).
Alastair Cook, David Warner, Kane Williamson, Steve Smith, AB de Villiers, Ben Stokes, Dale Steyn, Stuart Broad, Nathan Lyon and James Anderson make the rest of the Test XI of the decade.
MS Dhoni is the only captain to win all three ICC tournaments in white-ball cricket and has taken the Indian team to a different level altogether. He has also been the best finisher in the world for the most part of the decade and has guided India to a World Cup win in 2011 and Champions Trophy win in 2013. His calmness under pressure is what makes him stand out and his excellent field placing and reading of the game makes him one of the best cricketing brains around.
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One of the masterstrokes of Dhoni has been promoting Rohit Sharma to the open the batting as he has flourished for India as an opener and he just seems to get better with age. With five hundreds in the 2019 World Cup, Rohit has shown that he is arguably the best white-ball opener currently and is showing no signs of slowing down. Hashim Amla, who himself has had a brilliant career as an opener, has been named his opening partner in the One Day XI.
With an excess of 11,000 runs and other mind-boggling records, Kohli is the undisputed number three in the team while de Villiers, Shakib Al Hasan, Jos Buttler, Dhoni, Rashid Khan, Mitchell Starc, Trent Boult and Lasith Malinga form the rest of the One Day XI.