Dilip Vengsarkar reveals how he was opposed when he chose Virat Kohli over S Badrinath back in 2008

Virat Kohli may be India’s heartthrob today, but that wasn’t always the case. Former Indian cricketer, Dilip Vengsarkar has revealed that he had been sacked for his decision of giving the current Indian skipper a chance in the Indian national team back in 2008. Vengsarkar had been removed from the post of chairman of selectors for his choice.

The renowned cricket administrator made his revelation in “Democracy XI”; a book penned by journalist Rajdeep Sardesai. The book, which has chapters on Indian cricketing legends like MAK Pataudi, Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev and many more, has Vengsarkar comment on his tiff with N Srinivasan over the choice of selecting Kohli over Tamil Nadu player, S Badrinath. Fortunately, Kohli went on to dispel all doubts by emerging as the next cricketing superstar for the country.

Vengsarkar lost his job because he chose Virat

Back in 2008, Kohli had garnered recognition after leading the Indian team to victory in the U19 World Cup. As a result, he’d chosen to select the young lad to be drafted into the Indian team over S Badrinath. This decision, however, did not go down too well with N Srinivasan. The latter was the treasurer of BCCI and Tamil Nadu cricket head at that point in time.

In a segment of the chapter on Virat Kohli, Vengsarkar said, “When N. Srinivasan, then board treasurer and controller of Tamil Nadu cricket, found out I had dropped Badrinath for Virat, he was livid and went and complained to the board president Sharad Pawar. The next day I was removed as chairman of selectors but fortunately they couldn’t change my decision to pick Virat.”

The decision has raised quite a few eyebrows as there had been reports of Kohli being the young upstart doing the rounds back then. Further, the book quoted a selector saying, “We were being fed stories of how Virat was binge-drinking in the 2009 IPL in South Africa and was more interested in his hairstyle and tattoos than his cricket.”