Sunil Gavaskar heaps praise on Virat Kohli after Kanpur ODI

What's the story?

Former Indian cricket team captain Sunil Gavaskar heaped praise on Virat Kohli after the latter notched up two centuries in three matches and guided India to a 2-1 series victory over New Zealand.

“Virat’s consistency with the bat is beyond phenomenal. Against New Zealand, there was no question of him being denied a hundred. He got denied against the Australians but remember he learnt from that. He was not trying to run the ball to third man (against New Zealand), like he got out against the Australians in two of the five matches,” Gavaskar told NDTV.

“Key to Virat Kohli’s consistency is that he learns from his mistakes and to then avoid those. That is what Virat keeps on doing. There will be some same dismissals because that’s what cricket is all about but if you have made a mistake and you try to avoid it. The bowlers will get you out because they will bowl you the odd good ball, that is accepted. But the thing that he learns from errors and avoids them, that is why he is so consistent,” he added.

In case you didn't know...

After failing to perform with the bat in the second ODI, Kohli was back to his ominous best in the final ODI against the Blackcaps.

He scored 113 in just 106 balls with nine fours and one six to his name. He put on a 230 run partnership for the 2nd wicket along with Rohit Sharma, who scored 147.

The details:

Kohli crossed Ricky Ponting's tally of 30 ODI centuries in the first match against the Kiwis on October 22 and moved to 2nd place in the all-time list of most centuries in an ODI career.

After scoring his 32nd century, he is now seventeen centuries behind Sachin Tendulkar.

What's next?

India will take on New Zealand in the first of three T20Is on November 1 in Delhi, which is Ashish Nehra's farewell match.

Author's take:

With the way he has been performing, we will soon run out of adjectives to describe Kohli's batting. He has rightly moved up to no. 1 in the ODI rankings for batsmen and will now look to carry on his form into the T20Is as well.

His captaincy has been superb as well as India have not lost a single ODI series under him, winning seven consecutive series.