Team India wasn't aggressive under Kohli, but players attack under Rohit's captaincy, feels Aakash Chopra

Team India wasn't aggressive under Kohli, but players attack under Rohit's captaincy, feels Aakash Chopra

Former Indian opener compares captaincy styles of Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli

Former Indian opener-turned-commentator Aakash Chopra recently compared the captaincy styles of Virat Kohli and current Team India skipper Rohit Sharma. Rohit took over from Virat in T20Is soon after his resignation post the 2021 T20 World Cup, took over as ODI captain post his predecessor Kohli's sacking and was also named the Test captain early this year, after Virat gave up captaincy duties altogether.

Since then, Rohit-led India have done well in the limited-overs format and are gearing up for the 2022 Asia Cup, which will be followed by the T20 World Cup in October-November in Australia. Under Kohli, India did achieve a lot of success across formats -- despite not winning an ICC title -- and were an aggressive unit. However, Chopra made an interesting claim by saying that players under Rohit are far from attacking in their approach.

"Virat Kohli's big focus was - 'I want to do this.' It was a lot about wanting to set an example. Virat Kohli was very very aggressive on the field, in your face, never taking a backward step, but the team was not that aggressive under Virat Kohli," Chopra said on his Youtube channel. "That's a very interesting bit that he was himself very aggressive but the team was not aggressive. There could be multiple reasons for that. He talked about intent many times but we saw [Cheteshwar] Pujara getting run out twice in one match. So the 'intent' word was perhaps not understood correctly," he added.

Meanwhile, Chopra opined that Rohit might not seem to be that aggressive and animated, however, the team plays with a lot of freedom and aggression in his leadership. "Rohit Sharma is a very interesting character as a captain. The one thing I like about him a lot is that when you meet Rohit Sharma or see him on the ground, he doesn't look animated but the team that plays under him attacks," Chopra opined.

"We have seen that they play with freedom or you can say aggression. The main reason for that is he gives confidence to the team, that they have made a philosophy, they will play according to that, and that he is standing behind the players and will not let them get dropped," he further asserted.

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