India captain Virat Kohli, looking back over a decade, has said playing in the U-19 World Cup in 2008 \u201chelped us get a good platform to build on\u201d. \u201cSo it holds a very important place in my mind and heart. It is very important to understand and respect the opportunity it provides to you,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kohli picked his New Zealand counterpart Kane Williamson as the standout performer of the 2008 event, even though the event was dominated by his team and gave the India skipper his first taste of stardom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kohli\u2019s India beat Williamson\u2019s New Zealand in a close semifinal of that edition, which also featured Ravindra Jadeja, Trent Boult and Tim Southee. \u201cI remember playing against Kane. He was someone who always stood out in the team, his batting ability was very different from the other players who were around. It is good to know that so many people from that batch, like Kane and Steve Smith, have played for their respective countries,\u201d Kohli said in an interview to promote the latest U-19 World Cup, to be played in South Africa from January 17 to February 9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Kohli was a star of the 2008 edition, the 2010 edition featured some of the future England superstars such as Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler and current skipper Joe Root. In fact, Root recollected how Stokes had batted India out with a match-winning hundred. The all-rounder smashed 100 off 88 balls, including six sixes, to lift England to 246, which they successfully defended, giving themselves a flawless group stage record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t get off to the best start in that India game but Ben played one of the best innings I\u2019d ever seen for a player of that age,\u201d said Root. \u201cIt was on the first world stage you can play on he made a brilliant hundred and we ended up winning the game against the tournament favourites, which was fantastic and great to be a part of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India captain Virat Kohli, looking back over a decade, has said playing in the U-19 World Cup in 2008 \u201chelped us get a good platform to build on\u201d. \u201cSo it holds a very important place in my mind and heart. It is very important to understand and respect the opportunity it provides to you,\u201d he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":77586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77585"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77587,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77585\/revisions\/77587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}