JOIN USKohli, a cut above the rest
It’s been a dramatic four months in Indian cricket, a period that has seen a complete leadership transition within the senior men’s team. The once all-powerful Virat Kohli, the leader across all three formats, announced in September that he would relinquish the T20 captaincy at the conclusion of the T20 World Cup in November and resigned as Test skipper on Saturday, following a series loss to South Africa. Between these two developments, he was axed as the ODI skipper. It has been a massive turnaround in the fortunes of a player who ran the Indian team as if it were his fiefdom. The Captain Kohli era is well and truly behind us, but is he more sinned against than sinner?
One of cricket's oldest sayings that has stood the test of time is that 'a captain is as good as the team he leads.' This is true for everyone from Clive Lloyd to Graeme Smith and Sourav Ganguly to Steve Waugh. Occasionally, you come across captains who build the team they desire to lead. They are natural leaders, be it Imran Khan, Arjuna Ranatunga or disgraced late South African skipper Hansie Cronje. They were not just captains, they were visionaries. Kohli falls in that category. The aforementioned names didn’t boast the same on-field histrionics as Kohli. They didn't mouth expletives as freely as Kohli scored runs nor did they go looking for a scrap every time they took the field. Even in his last Test as captain in Cape Town, Kohli let rip through the stump microphone, inviting all-round criticism. But rest assured, history will be kinder to the 33-year-old for his pioneering role in the transformation of the Indian Test team.
From his first Test in charge, standing in for the injured MS Dhoni in Adelaide in December 2014, Kohli showed he was cut from a different cloth. He played to win and was willing to risk defeat in pursuit of victory. A maiden series win in Australia in 2019 may rank as his greatest on-field achievement, but his grandest legacy will remain the lengths he went to in bolstering the team's fortunes in testing overseas conditions. The emphasis on pace and fitness catapulted India to one of the most feared sides in the world. Additionally, no current cricketer of stature has done more to further the cause of Test cricket. Kohli takes great pride in not just playing Tests but doing so with passion and intensity, for which the cricketing world and the authorities must be hugely thankful given the threat to the longer format from the T20 upstart in the main.