Michael Clarke and Piers Morgan question Virat Kohli's omission from ICC Test team of the year

By Arya Chakraborty

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Virat Kohli
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Virat Kohli. (Photo Source: Twitter)

The International Cricket Council (ICC) announced its annual awards yesterday and also named the teams of the year across three different formats. The most surprising exclusion from the Test team of the year was perhaps India’s Test captain Virat Kohli who is in the middle of a purple patch in his international career and has scored heaps of runs in this calendar year.

After many former greats and experts criticised the game’s governing body it was the turn of British journalist Piers Morgan and former Aussie captain Michael Clarke to come up with the same views. Morgan who is a popular face on Twitter was astonished to see Virat Kohli missing out and Alastair Cook leading the Test team despite suffering 8 defeats in the year.

Michael Clarke went a step further and enquired whether he was seeing things correctly. According to him irrespective of the dates, Aussie captain Steve Smith and Virat Kohli deserved a chance in the Test team of the year. The team which was picked by former legends of the game Kumar Sangakkara, Rahul Dravid and Gary Kirsten came under severe criticism for excluding many players who performed exceptionally well in the calendar year and Virat Kohli was one of the biggest names among them.

The performances which were put into consideration during the selection process was between 14th September 2015 to 20th September 2016, a window where most of the other batsmen outscored Kohli.

The modern master scored only 451 runs in 8 Tests during the period at an average of 45. But after that window, Kohli struck three centuries including two doubles and has scored nearly 1000 runs in 8 Tests at a staggering average of over 80.

BCCI President Anurag Thakur had also said that while it was unfortunate that Kohli wasn’t included in the Test team of the year but it was justified as the voting happened in the September window where Kohli scored less than his peers and his most dominant performances of the year came after the cut-off date.

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Michael ClarkeVirat Kohli