IPL 2023: I feel embarrassed when I am compared to Sachin Tendulkar – Virat Kohli

India’s veteran Virat Kohli has admitted that he feels embarrassed when he is compared with legendary Sachin Tendulkar. It is well known that Kohli has always considered Sachin as his role model and has huge respect for the former Indian opener.

Sachin is well regarded as one of the greatest batters of all time and broke a plethora of records in his glorious career. The talisman scored a century of centuries at the International circuit and has many milestones in his bag.

On the other hand, Virat Kohli is among the best players of the current era. Kohli has scored a total of 75 International centuries, the second-most by any player after Sachin Tendulkar.

“I say this to people all the time that I had talent but the most complete or wasn’t someone who you make you go like ‘oh my god, that’s unbelievable’. I was good and was able to do little bit with my talent, but I know I wasn’t the most gifted guy around in terms of taking things by storm or making things happen. I was determined from a very young age, but I have no issues in admitting that I never ever in my wildest dream did I think sitting here at 34 in this situation,” said Kohli while speaking to Robin Uthappa on Jio Cinema.

Kohli reckons no player should be compared with the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Sir Viv Richards as both of these legendary players revolutionized the sport in their respective eras.

“I feel embarrassed when I am compared to Sachin though I get where these people are coming from with all those statistics and stuff. But these stats tell you a different story. The impact a player leaves on you as a child growing up is very different. I just laugh it off every time. These people have no idea about the game,” said Kohli.

“Sachin Tendulkar always has been emotion for me, if you speak to anyone, they look at him as their own because everyone has faith and trust in him, he was the source of inspiration and comfort, when he scored runs, life was good,” Kohli added.

“Nobody should be compared with Sachin and Viv Richards because they revolutionized the game in their era and the belief people had in them was rare, it rare to have that belief in one player.”

Kohli has scored a truckload of runs all across the globe but he doesn’t consider himself to be in the same club as Sachin Tendulkar. The RCB batter has scored 220 runs in five matches of the ongoing IPL 2023 at an average of 55 and a strike rate of 147.65.