Lose the dressing room, lose the captaincy. Is that what happened with Virat Kohli?

As captain, Virat Kohli scored 5,449 runs in 95 matches with 21 centuries in ODIs. He also has the best batting average (72.65) as ODI captain. (Image: AFP)

Virat Kohli has been a leader on the cricket field, ever since he was a teenager. Under his captaincy, India’s under-19 side had won the World Cup more than a decade ago. Captaincy has always rested on his shoulders pretty easily. His one-day international (ODI) record as captain of the Indian team is proof that he’s a quality leader of men. Kohli led the country in 95 matches, winning 65 of them. Only Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Mohammad Azharuddin and Sourav Ganguly have recorded higher number of wins as ODI captains. But Kohli has the best win percentage of them all – 70.43%. He’s India’s best ODI captain in terms of the winning percentage. But how then did he lose the white-ball captaincy?

Also read: 'Too much leadership': Sourav Ganguly speaks on sacking Virat Kohli as ODI captain

Did he lose support of the dressing room a bit? Maybe, yes. For years he led a tight-knit unit where seniors and newcomers hunted as a pack. But in recent times, therewere rumours that he was not able to guide youngsters. It didn’t help that he never settled into one plan either. It looked like he would lose confidence in a player, after just one or two poor outings. A theory emerged that Kohli was probably not spending enough time with the team. Did that affect the bond? Did it have an effect on players like Kuldeep Yadav or some of the younger batsmen, or even on a veteran like Shikhar Dhawan? There were steady rumours that he wasn’t getting along with Rohit Sharma and some of the other seniors too.

Cricketing circles are convinced that Kohli had trust issues with the team. Ravichandran Ashwin has never been able to fully fit into Kohli’s white-ball teams, though it was never clear why he wasn’t an automatic choice. Ashwin is among the best spinners in the world, but that didn’t convince Kohli that he should be playing one-day or T20 cricket on a regular basis. Maybe fitness was held against him. It’s not that Ashwin wasn’t fit, but he probably was not the fastest fielder in the team. Ravindra Jadeja, with his superior fielding and athleticism, was the preferred spinner. Even in Ashwin’s words, it felt like he had to take five wickets every time he played to remain in contention.

Kohli, probably, did not realise that losing a bit of the dressing room would have a significant impact on his captaincy-tenure. He would have definitely felt he was taking the right steps, building a highly fit and athletic squad, which spends a lot of time at the gym. It is possible that his voice was not reaching all corners within the team. Kohli often spoke about intent and communication in his press conferences but strangely those were the two aspects that seemed to be missing of late in his captaincy.

When Ajinkya Rahane took over as captain in Australia after Kohli returned to India mid-series to be with his wife and first-born, no one suspected that there would be a turning point of sorts. With Kohli’s commanding leadership style, the team tends to lose a bit of its individual flair. The team merely reflects Kohli’s aggression on the field. With Ajinkya Rahane captaining the ship, each member started expressing himself. It appeared like Ashwin was enjoying a fresh lease of life and started dominating on the field of play. His confidence was back and he was picking wickets and putting the Aussies in all kinds of trouble. Rahane and the team scripted a huge turnaround in that series, winning it against all odds, with Rishabh Pant emerging as a matchwinner.

BCCI President Sourav Ganguly and the new Indian head coach Rahul Dravid go back a long way. They have seen cricket and its ways. After Kohli decided to step down as T20 captain of his own will, he had opened an opportunity for selectors to have a look at his ODI credentials. Now, Kohli’s batting record in ODI is legendary. As captain, Kohli has scored 5,449 runs in 95 matches with 21 centuries in the one-days. He also has the best batting average (72.65) as ODI captain. Ricky Ponting is the only international skipper who has scored more hundreds (22). Kohli’s overall record of 43 ODI centuries ranks second only to Sachin Tendulkar’s 49.

On the other hand, since January 2020, he has averaged just 26 in Tests. Yet he retains the Test captaincy but loses the white-ball leader label. There is only one reason for this. His inability to win ICC tournaments. With India’s financial might in cricket and the fact that we can field two strong sides in each form of cricket with all the talent available in the country, it must have been hugely disappointing for the BCCI not to have more trophies in its cabinet.

The Indian team had lost to Pakistan in the 2017 Champions Trophy final and were beaten by New Zealand in the semi-final of the 2019 ODI World Cup. India had also crashed out in the group stages in the T20 World Cup in 2021. The Ganguly-Dravid-Jay Shah combination would want greater success from the team in big tournaments. How do we get that done? Bring in Rohit Sharma. The Mumbaikar has had a wonderful run as Mumbai Indians captain, besides showing his captaincy skills in ample measure whenever he had the chance to lead. Sharma has a more relaxed approach towards captaincy and seems to give individuals greater freedom to express themselves on and off the pitch. This makes him popular as a leader. It will be exciting to see what he brings to the table, with another T20 World Cup slated for next year and the big prize – the ODI World Cup – coming up in 2023.

As far as Kohli is concerned, it’s a great time for him to get back to some world-beating form in white-ball cricket. He has plenty of catching up to do in the T20 format, but it’s in the ODIs that India will need his sublime batting skills the most. Not that captaincy ever wore him down as a batter, but here’s a chance for him to silence all detractors. Kohli is 33, but with his level of high fitness, we could be seeing the best of his batting abilities in the next couple of years. Sharma and Dravid would need that the most.