Ex-Chief Selector And Former India Captain Dilip Vengsarkar Recounts Picking Virat Kohli For Emerging Players' Tournament

Virat Kohli will join an elite list of cricketers on Friday when he plays his 100th Test match as India take on Sri Lanka in the first of the two-match Test series in Mohali. Kohli will become the 71st player in the world to play 100 Tests. Kohli's journey in international cricket started in 2008, when he was picked to play in an ODI against Sri Lanka in August 2008. He made his Test debut in 2011.

Former India captain Dilip Vengsarkar was the chairman of selectors when Kohli made his international debut and he recounted the moment when he had seen Kohli play for the first first time and how he then selected Kohli for the Emerging Players' Tournament in Australia, in a video shared by BCCI on Twitter.

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"I watched Virat Kohli for the first time during an U-16 tournament when he played for Delhi schools against Mumbai schools and that was at Kolkata. He didn't score many runs but he was quite impressive.

"Later on of course he played U-19 for India and did extremely well, they won the World Cup."

"The emerging players' tournament was happening in Australia and I was the chairman of the selection committee, and we picked U-23 boys in that tournament because what we felt was that emerging players should be under 23 because they are the future of Indian cricket, so that's how we had picked Virat Kohli," Vengsarkar said.

Kohli has scored 7962 runs in 99 Tests so far at an average of 50.39.

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