Two veterans but different eras ! – Vivian Richards and Virat Kohli

Recently Virat Kohli joined Vivian Richards as the fastest individual to 5000 ODI runs. Quite a feat this, isn’t it. Firstly, to achieve it at the age of 24 is in itself commendable and secondly, being spoken of together in the same sentence as king Viv would be an honour for Kohli. But how do these two fair against each other? There is no doubt that they are veterans of their respective eras. Richards dominated the 80s while Kohli has probably been the best one-day player around in the past three years. When someone is compared to Sir Viv, he must be special and same is the case with Kohli. He has been sublime for India recently, having become a run machine and also scoring those runs at a phenomenal rate. Now, rolling back the years, the one thing that stood out about Richards is the impact that he had on a match or even on the opposition bowlers. This level of intimidation was never heard of before and bowlers used to have nightmares about Richards hitting them out of the park in multiple ways. Even the great Imran Khan has admitted having sleepless nights when they used to play the West Indies because of this middle order maestro. Kohli might not exert the same kind of fear on the opposition or be as intimidating, but he certainly has managed to bother many a opposition with his hunger for runs and relentlessness apart from some clean hitting based on a solid technique, which in Richard’s case was natural and demanded use of brute force. Kohli has the complete range of shots but again he does not have the extravagant shots that Richards employed from time to time. Moreover, maintaining a strike rate of 92 over a long career, that too in the 70s and 80s where people used to have strike rate in the 60s, was incredible in itself. It can be said that Kohli has a fine-tuned technique of the two while Richards’ game had a degree of risk associated with it, which perhaps made it more fascinating for the viewers.
One advantage similar to both the players, was the presence of great batsmen in their repective sides to guide them, when they started playing international cricket. While Richards had Lloyd, Haynes and Kanhai, on the other hand, Kohli was lucky to play with the likes of Tendulkar and Dravid. This would have played in the favour of both. But, Richards had the luxury of being in a team which boasted of some of the greatest fast bowlers ever, who more often than not used to bundle out the opposition for a paltry score which made the job of their batsmen slightly easier while Kolhi has to put up with an average Indian bowling unit most of the time and so this is an area where Kohli has an edge.
There is no doubt that Kohli has a long way to go in his career, especially in test cricket, where he would want to have a greater impact but his performances in ODIs have made the case of him being compared with the greatest ODI players of all time, none more impactful as Viv. But, Kohli definitely has some way to go before being considered somewhere close to Richards.