Herschelle Gibbs names Virat Kohli as his all-time favourite Indian cricketer

Interestingly, Virat Kohli picked Gibbs as his favourite cricketer during his U19 days.

He had played against the likes of Sachin Tendulkar during his cricketing years. But former South Africa opener Herschelle Gibbs has chosen Virat Kohli as his favourite player from India. The 45-year-old, who played his last competitive game as recently as four years ago, was asked to name his all-time favourite Indian cricketer and he wasted no time in saying: “Kohli”.

The Indian captain has just led India to a comprehensive series victory in a T20I series against New Zealand in their den. He saw the Men in Blue winning four straight games before Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul pocketed the final match to register a thumping 5-0 win.

Virat Kohli has been one of India’s most successful captains who won a Test series in Australia in 2018-19. They narrowly missed winning the World Cup under him in England last year but going by their performance in the T20I series, one can get a clear indication that Kohli is eyeing the T20 World Cup this October-November.

Gibbs, who scored over 14,000 international runs with 35 hundreds and 63 fifties, had infamously dropped an easy catch of Australia captain Steve Waugh in the Super Six stage of the 1999 World Cup. Waugh had slammed a match-winning hundred in that game and mocked Gibbs, aged 25 then, that he had not dropped the catch but the World Cup. Australia indeed went to the final after their game against SA ended up in a thrilling tie in the semi-final since they had finished ahead of the Proteas in the Super Six points table.

Kohli — Herschelle Gibbs (@hershybru) February 3, 2020

Sanjay Manjrekar compares Virat Kohli to Imran Khan

Coming back to Virat Kohli, former India batsman Sanjay Manjrekar also praised the India captain saying there were a lot of similarities between him and former Pakistan captain Imran Khan, the country’s current prime minister, as both instilled strong beliefs in their teammates.

“India under Virat in NZ reminds me of Pakistan under Imran. Strong self-belief as a team. Pakistan under Imran found different ways of winning matches, often from losing positions. That only happens when the self-belief is strong,” the commentator tweeted after India whitewashed the Kiwis.

Freehit: 17 Questions with Kerala’s prolific all-rounder Jalaj Saxena