India vs West Indies: Virat Kohli Breaks MS Dhoni’s Record to Become India’s Most Successful Captain in Test Cricket

The win in Jamaica Test was also Kohli’s eighth triumph as India’s Test captain outside Asia.

Virat Kohli has surpassed his good friend and idol MS Dhoni to become Team India’s most successful captain in cricket’s most traditional format – Test cricket. After registering a comprehensive win in the second Test against West Indies by a huge margin of 257 runs, India completed the clean sweep on Day 4 at the Sabina Park on Monday. Courtesy this magnificent win, Kohli now has 28 victories in 48 matches while Dhoni recorded 27 wins in 60 Test matches. With 28 wins under his belt, the 30-year-old Kohli ranks 3rd in the all-time list of captains with most victories behind Steve Waugh (36) and Ricky Ponting (33). Kohli’s sight will now be on Graeme Smith and Ricky Ponting’s record who have 53 and 48 wins respectively.

Sourav Ganguly and Mohammad Azharuddin are the other successful Indian skippers on the list with 21 and 14 wins respectively. Ganguly is third on the list with 21 wins from 49 matches as skipper with 13 losses and 15 draws. The win in Jamaica Test was also Kohli’s eighth triumph as India’s Test captain outside Asia. Meanwhile, Kohli’s biggest overseas Test series win as the captain came when he ended India’s 71-year-long wait for a Test series triumph in Australia in 2019.

Virat Kohli now has more Test wins (28) than any other Indian captain 🏆#WIvIND pic.twitter.com/AQKUD1c9HT

— ICC (@ICC) September 2, 2019

Dhoni had a win percentage of 45 as captain, after winning 27 matches, losing 18 and drawing 15. On the other hand, Kohli’s win percentage is 55.31 — the best among all other Indian captains in the format. In the 48 Tests under Virat Kohli, India have registered 28 wins, lost 10 games and drawn another 10.

Earlier, Kohli had also surpassed the Bengal Tiger with the most Test wins in overseas matches for India as captain in the first Test of the series. Kohli now has 13 away wins as captain in 26 matches, while Ganguly had 11 wins in 28 games.

Talking about the 2nd Test, in-form India batsmen Ajinkya Rahane (64*) and Hanuma Vihari (53*) struck unbeaten half-centuries to set an improbable 468-run target for the hosts, and in the second innings Ravindra Jadeja (3/58) and Mohammed Shami 3/65) took three wickets each to bowl them out for 210 in 59.5 overs.

This happy bunch 🇮🇳🇮🇳🔝 #TeamIndia #WIvIND pic.twitter.com/YbOJaHbMw6

— BCCI (@BCCI) September 2, 2019

In the first innings, India had put up 416 riding Hanuma Vihari’s maiden hundred (111) and skipper Virat Kohli’s 76. Pacer Ishant Sharma (57) had also scored his first fifty.

In reply, West Indies were no match to Jasprit Bumrah’s onslaught as the world-class pacer returned magical figures of 6/27 which included a hattrick as he became only the third Indian bowler to get the treble in Test cricket after Harbhajan Singh and Irfan Pathan.