"I think he has decided on achieving certain goals and he is trying his best to achieve them," Borde told mid-day yesterday
Virat Kohli celebrates after scoring 150 against WI on Wednesday. Pic/AFP
India captain Virat Kohli knows exactly what he wants to achieve and one day he will be the owner of all batting records, reckons former Test batsman and ex-chief selector Chandu Borde.
"I think he has decided on achieving certain goals and he is trying his best to achieve them," Borde told mid-day yesterday. After a tie in the second ODI on Wednesday, Kohli & Co are in Borde's hometown for today's third ODI. Kohli has 10,076 and 6,331 runs in ODIs and Tests respectively with 37 and 24 hundreds in each format. "The way he is scoring runs and notching up centuries consistently, I hope that one day he will have all records to his name," said Borde, 84.
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Chandu Borde
Kohli who is in superb form, scored centuries in the first two ODIs against West Indies at Guwahati and Visakhapatnam. On Wednesday, he became the fastest batsman to reach 10,000 ODI runs (205 innings). Batting legend Sachin Tendulkar, who also scored a century while reaching Peak 10,000 (against Australia at Indore in 2001) reached this milestone in 259 innings.
The only worrying aspect for Borde is Kohli's fitness. "If he is able to maintain the same fitness levels, he will continue having the same reflexes and performances. It will all depend on his fitness standards. But he is a fitness freak which is very good. The way he converts singles into twos and twos into threes is just commendable. What I find rare is that he looks a well-set batsman from the very first ball," remarked Borde.
Where Kohli's confidence level is concerned, Borde rated him alongside Tendulkar, Vijay Hazare and Sunil Gavaskar. "He is a very confident cricketer, just like Sachin. If I have look back further, I'd say Hazare and Gavaskar enjoyed the same kind of supreme confidence," said Borde, who played alongside Hazare, was a selector during the Gavaskar era and was manager on Tendulkar's first Test tour — to Pakistan in 1989.
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