Former Australia Fast bowler Brett Lee believes that the current Indian Captain Virat Kohli is quite similar to former Australian Captain Ricky Ponting.
Kohli is termed as one of the best modern day cricketer & Ponting is one of the best & successful Australia Captain of his time. Ponting during his tenure led his team to two ODI World Cup title wins in the year 2003 & 2007. Ponting just like Kohli always had a winning mentality & hated to lose any game.
While highlighting both the epic cricketers similarity Brett Lee said, “Everyone’s got different styles of captaincy. If you see Ricky Ponting and Virat Kohli, you could say there are some similarities between their captaincy styles. They’ve got that raw aggression, but it’s not necessarily over the top”.
“There have been times where every captain’s gone over the top from every nation. But I’ve enjoyed watching Kohli’s captaincy. Because real passion comes through. He wants to do really well for the team,” Lee added.
The former fast bowler went ahead to explain how the style of Captaincy of Kohli & Ponting is different from MS Dhoni & Ganguly. “I played against Dhoni and Ganguly. They are once again different captains. They’ve got a different, more of a laid-back style but effective. So, you don’t have to be a captain that’s aggressive. You don’t have to be laid back. You should do whatever works for you and whatever to get the best out of your players.
“But there are guys who are great team managers in terms of the way they manage their talent amongst the team. Because that’s all a captain is all about. The captain should be a good leader. People and players should look up to them and respect them and these guys (Ganguly, Dhoni, Kohli) have definitely got that,” Lee added.
Lee further explains how he finds Kohli’s & Ponting Captaincy is different from Dhoni & Ganguly, “Apart from Kohli’s captaincy, he does well with the bat personally. He is the same as Ricky Ponting. He had that real powerful aggression but not too much. There’s a nice balance, I think. They are pretty similar when it comes to captaincy“.
“And also, they’ve got a great ability to read the players. So, you think about Ponting the way he had set the fields, very attacking fields, I see the same In Kohli. Kohli is happy to attack,” the cricketer-turned-commentator added.
On Cricket front India & Australia are scheduled to face each other in December this year to play the much awaited four match Test series.
