Reviewing India Under Captain Kohli

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After two long years, the inaugural World Test Championship has finally to come to an end. It started off with England and Australia taking on each other in the first of many tests in the league. The league comprised nine teams and was down to two countries, Indian and New Zealand, hustling to be crowned as the first ever World Test Champions. New Zealand eventually beat India quite comprehensively to seal the victory by 8 wickets and they are now the first World Test Champions.

This was India's third ICC event, played under the captaincy of Virat Kohli. Under his captaincy, India reached the final of the 2017 Champions Trophy and the semi-final of 2019 Cricket World Cup. Unfortunately, India were outplayed in both the knockout games. Adding to fan's misery, India have now lost the World Test Championship final as well.

The common pattern in India's loss in all the three knockout games has been the batsmen's inability to play swing bowling well. Indian top order collapsed in the three crucial games when they were needed the most.

ICC World Test Championship Final 2021

Analyzing India's loss at the WTC final against New Zealand, what basically costed India the ICC mace was the bowler's inability to get the opposition's tail out cheaply. In the first innings, India bowled out the NZ top order cheaply as the side was reeling at 162-6 but due to contributions from the lower order, NZ propelled to 249 and gained a valuable 32 runs lead. Had the tail got out cheaply and India avoided dropping catches at the slips, the result may have been something different. 

Not discussing about the batsmen's struggle against swing bowling is probably a better option for the fans as it is not a matter of concern for the team management either. If it would have been one, the team would not have grappled against swing bowling for years.

ICC Cricket World Cup 2019

The World Cup 2019 was altogether a different anecdote where the team management just messed everything up. It was really baffling to see that a captain, who had two years to build a team, couldn't find a player for number 4 spot. Ambati Rayudu was short listed as the batsman at number 4 but just before the World Cup, Vijay Shankar was preferred over him and Rayudu was axed from the squad. Finally when the World Cup started, out of nowhere, you see KL Rahul batting at number 4. 

Discussing about the management's decision of sending MS Dhoni at number 7 in the semi final against NZ is altogether a different narrative. After having made a botch of the world cup, the captain tried to justify the loss by a "45 minutes of bad cricket" phrase.

The best part is that even after so many mess ups, we never saw the captain taking responsibility of his decisions. You expect a captain to take full responsibility and accept his faults after a poor team outing. But these practices can't stand in front of a man's ego. 

Probably, the Indian "supreme leaders", of late, have been habituated of not taking responsibilty after messing everything up. If you know whom am I talking about!

ICC Champions Trophy 2017

The Champions Trophy final was just another day with similar issues. The same old problem against swing resurfaced and in the process, Pakistan won the Champions Trophy.

The Positives

Talking about the victories under Virat Kohli, India have won all home test series since he took over the reigns from MSD and since India started producing absolutely dead rank turners. India also won against the depleted sides of Sri Lanka, West Indies and Australia(2018-19) in their own dens and thus moved to number 1 spot in ICC test rankings.

On India's tour to the SENA countries, India comprehensively won the test series in England(4-1), South Africa(2-1) and New Zealand(2-0) and emerged as the best test team in the world. Wait, did I just type the facts wrong in the last line? Well, I believe you would have understood the pun.

So talking about the actual positives under his captaincy, India have arguably the best fast bowling line up in the world. Virat Kohli, the fitness freak passed on his zeal to be the fittest to his team mates. The yo-yo test was introduced as a parameter to qualify for selection. As a result, India is one of the fittest teams in the world. Kohli, undoubtedly, must be credited for revolutionizing the fitness standards of Indian team. 

The Issues

There's a fine line between confidence and over confidence. The Virat Kohli led side has more often than not been on the undesirable side of the line. As discussed earlier, Indian batting line up has struggled against quality bowling line ups. In 2017, the Cricket Advisory Committee announced Rahul Dravid as India's batting consultant on overseas tours but the team management proved to be superior than the CAC and Dravid's appointment was scraped. 

During India's tour of South Africa and England in 2018, the team's warm up matches were either cancelled or shortened without any justifiable reasons. As a result, India seemed off color in the first matches on the tours.

The IPL Criteria of Selection

Over the past few years, the IPL has left the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and the Vijay Hazare Trophy way behind to be considered as the criteria for selection in the Indian team. There are no second thoughts about this fact actually. Yuzvendra Chahal, Washington Sundar, Rishabh Pant and many more players earned their spots in the team after excellent performances in the IPL. They always had the talent but IPL provided them the ultimate platform.

This selection criteria does spark a question in every cricket fan's brain. If we can choose players based on their performances in the IPL, then why can't we choose our captain in the same way.

Virat Kohli started captaining RCB in 2013 and has never achieved the desired results. He had opportunities in 2014 and 2018 to build a team from scratch but he always disappointed himself and his fans as well. He has no one to blame except him.

On the other hand, Rohit Sharma has won five titles for MI in eight seasons. On paper, MI appear to be the best T20 team in the world. These two facts are certainly enough to prove his worth.

Rohit Sharma as the Indian Captain?

In my opinion, there should not be any doubts over this. Rohit certainly deserves to lead India at the coming T20 World Cup. But unfortunately we won't be able to witness him as the full time Indian captain, at least till this T20 World Cup.

The reason behind this is that the game today is half played on the social media platform as modern day cricket is not just about skills, but it is about money. When it comes to social media and overall fan following, the BCCI won't even think about changing the captain of the Indian team as you know who is way ahead in this battle.

But in the coming future, who knows, if India perform extremely poorly in the T20 World Cup, the BCCI may look for a change going forward.

 

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