I feel Virat Kohli is inspiring a nation: Adam Gilchrist

Australia great wicket keeper-batsman Adam Gilchrist has highly praised Virat Kohli for his batting and his captaincy skills. ‘Gilly feels that Virat will take charge of the Indian team in all three formats for a long time.

“Virat is so impressive. He has learnt leadership in front of our eyes. When he is in charge (in Tests), he is very keen to fight fire with fire. I feel he is inspiring a nation and the team to go forward,” Gilchrist, who is now Australia’s Education Ambassador to India, said on Wednesday.

While he appreciated Virat Kohli for his leadership skills, Gilchrist also added that one should never forget the contribution of Mahendra Singh Dhoni to Indian cricket. He said that Virat Kohli has plenty of time to take over as the leader across all formats.

“It is not for me to speculate. MSD (Dhoni) said after the World T20 that he would be playing for a quite a while. He has been an amazing leader and contributor to Indian cricket. He can go on for long as he wants and Virat has at least 10 more years for cricket left in him. So he has got plenty of time (to play and captain India).”

The Australian legend also spoke about the cricketing rivalry India and Australia have between them. He says that due to the IPL, the relationship between the players from both the countries ahs been very healthy.

“The high level of intensity has continued from the time I played. I might not seem like that on the field but it is primarily down to the level of respect, respect in how very decent your opponents are. Off the field yes there have been incidents of various individuals over the years and some of them were inappropriate. But the players and teams learn from that hopefully. Overall the relationship (between players of two teams) has been very, very strong, thanks to the IPL. But when you see two teams going hard at each other on the field, getting angry with each other, it is because they fear each other in a cricketing sense and that to me is a lot of respect for your opponent,” he said.