How Virender Sehwag's Twisted Ankle Led To Virat Kohli's International Debut

Virat Kohli in action during his debut series [X]

Destiny plays an important factor in any sport, and it also applies to the cricketers. After a successful Under-19 World Cup, a young Virat Kohli was included in the India squad for the tour of Sri Lanka.

The plan for the team management was to give him game-time incase someone gets ruled out of the match/series. The team management never had any plans to play Kohli in that series, but as destiny panned out, Virender Sehwag's injury led to the introduction of the greatest white-ball player in history.

How a twisted ankle led to Kohli's iconic debut

 A day before the first ODI against Sri Lanka, Sehwag twisted his ankle, and was ruled out of the  series opener. He sustained the injury during the last training session ahead of the ODI game, and when the India opener failed to recover, the big call was made - to include Kohli in the playing XI.The rest as they say is history. 

Talking about Kohli's debut series, he scored 159 runs in 5 matches, with an average of 31.80, including a solitary fifty as well. With each passing match, his game improved, and India won the ODIs, 3-2.

Kohli was excluded from the next couple of series, as the seniors made their return. However, the ODIs against Sri Lanka in 2009 was the turning point, and since then, he never looked back and has established himself as one of the best batters of his generation.

The former India captain has accumulated 26942 runs across formats, and it also includes 80 centuries.

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