From Virat Kohli to Yash Dhull: Meet Munish Bali who coached the 2008 & 2022 India u-19 World Cup teams

Virat Kohli and Yash Dhull have a few things in common. They are both ICC u-19 World Cup winning captains. They are both batsmen, both are from Delhi and with Dhull shaping up to be quite the run machine, he finds more and more comparisons being drawn between him and Virat. But there's another thing that binds the two and the two Indian u-19 World Cup winning teams of 2008 and 2022. The presence of coach Munish Bali in both camps, 14 years apart. Bali has travelled with India's Under-19 cricket team twice for the World Cup and the young guns have returned with the coveted trophy on both occasions. Bali was the assistant coach of the victorious U-19 World Cup-winning cricket team of 2008, led by Virat Kohli. This year, he travelled as fielding coach and the Yash Dhull-led side lifted the prestigious trophy again.

Coach Munish Bali"Lucky charm (smiles). I don't know. I am happy that you are calling me that. The team of 2008 was way more experienced than this team (2022). Virat was already playing Ranji Trophy. Manish Pandey, Taruwar Kohli, Siddharth Kaul, Tanmay Srivastava, Abhinav Mukund, Ravindra Jadeja were already playing Ranji Trophy. They had the experience of playing competitive cricket. This team (of the 22022 edition) was raw. By raw I mean they haven't played much cricket in two years due to the pandemic. So, the challenge at this World Cup was bigger," Bali told TimesofIndia.com in an exclusive interview. "Both the World Cup wins are special. I was the assistant coach in 2008 and there were many from that World Cup-winning team who went on to play for India (senior team). Virat became India captain and took Indian cricket to a different level. That win was special and this win was also special." Flashback again