'I've no shame in accepting that I made many mistakes' - Virat Kohli opens up on his captaincy tenure of team India

Virat Kohli is one of the most successful captains of India across all three formats. The star batter captained the Test team from 2014- 2022 and led the ODI and T20I sides from 2017-2021. While Kohli led India to several bilateral series victories, he failed to win any major trophy under his leadership. With Kohli at the helm, India lost the final of the Champions Trophy 2017, semi-final of the ODI World Cup 2019 and the final of the World Test Championship 2021.

In a recent interview, the former India captain stated that he has no shame in accepting that he made many mistakes during his tenure as India captain but had no selfish motives and had only one goal to take the team ahead.

“Hundred percent. So I have no shame in accepting that I have made many mistakes when I was the captain. But the one thing I know, for sure that I never did anything for my own selfish motives that I can take guarantee of that from the one to the last day. I have not done anything for myself. I just had one goal to take the team ahead,” said Kohli in the PUMA’s Let There Be Sport documentary series.

“I can totally accept if I have taken the decisions correctly or not.  I can totally accept it you make mistakes like you make errors when you get out, that’s a failure. Failures will keep happening but the intent was never in the wrong place. So I can absolutely take guarantee of that. Till that is in its right place, you will make mistakes, but you will learn from that as I said, you will not then start shining away from making things," the 34-year-old added.

Kohli further said that he learnt a lot from his mistakes during his captaincy.

“My intentions were always right. The ways I said you had to tweak according to individuals. Many times decisions have been wrong, but these things teach you a lot. Then you start taking it as the whole journey and what went well, but then go right and then you learn from all situations so that’s exactly what happened," he added.

Kohli is India's most successful Test captain

Notably, under Kohli’s leadership India won their first-ever Test and bilateral ODI series on Australian soil in 2018-19. The Delhi-born cricketer is credited for making India’s pace bowling attack lethal which led to the team performing exceptionally in SENA countries. 

The star batter stepped down from T20I captaincy ahead of the T20 World Cup 2021 where India got knocked out in the first stage itself. He was further sacked from ODI captaincy in December 2021 as the BCCI didn’t want separate captains in the two white-ball formats. The 34-year-led also gave up his Test captaincy in January 2022 after a 1-2 series loss against South Africa. Notably, Kohli is the fourth most successful captain In Test history with 40 wins from 68 matches.