Kohli the batsman is daunting, but what about his legacy as captain?

The swansong for Indian captain Virat Kohli in T20 format is one of the hottest points of discussion in recent times. The fact that he ended his last season in charge of RCB without a trophy did not help his cause. The T20 World Cup currently underway in the UAE is his last chance at redemption.

While not winning a single major trophy despite having arguably the best Indian team in history at his behest questions his capability as a leader, Kohli-siders don’t seem to think so. “He has given RCB that kind of profile, that brand recognition that very few cricketers have given to their franchise,” said former India captain Sunil Gavaskar on Star Sports.

Really? Is this how fans and cricket observers are going to remember Kohli’s captaincy in the IPL?  Kohli merely as a colossal brand in the IPL? "His legacy as captain in IPL cricket will be one that didn't win. That's what it's about, you know high-level sport is about getting over the line, winning trophies, particularly when you're at the standard of what Virat Kohli is at. I'm certainly not saying that he is, but he will see himself as a failure in IPL captaincy -- because he is such a driven player and person - since he's not got that trophy in his hands”, said former England captain Michael Vaughan to Cricbuzz . And perhaps, it won’t be an exaggeration to say that except the hard-core King Kohli fans, most would nod in agreement with Vaughan.

“The script is not always written that way. Not everybody has this great fortune of going on a high. But can one ever dispute what he has done for RCB?” wondered Gavaskar, an argument which is little hard to digest.  Indeed, what has Kohli really done for the RCB?  Forget winning the trophy, the RCB side under Kohli didn’t even make it to the playoffs in five out of nine seasons. The best they came close in lifting the trophy was way back in 2016. And another dismal fact that shouldn’t be forgotten in a hurry is that under Kohli’s captaincy his team finished with a wooden spoon, not on one, but two occasions.

And yet astonishingly, there is this classic case of glass being half full as far judging Kohli’s captaincy in T20 format is concerned. If you need reminder, this is the first time Kohli is going as captain in a T20 World Cup which is also going to be his last as captain in this format. Last time when India played a T20 world cup, MS Dhoni was captain in 2016. So, it’s perhaps unfair to club the 2019 ODI World Cup and WTC 2021 failures with T20 World Cup as well since he has not captained at an ICC event in the shortest format of the game. In fact, purely on statistical evidence, Kohli is among the top-5 captains of all-time in the history of the format. What is more, none boasts a better Win/Loss ratio away from home than Kohli. Critics fail to acknowledge or maybe deliberately underplay the fact that in T20I cricket India have won a bilateral series in every country they’ve played.

Staggeringly, over the years, the RCB under Kohli has been a perennial underachiever and has performed poorly with a remarkable consistency despite having some of the finest match winners of this format in his team.  Or else, how would you explain that someone who is just second (140 matches) to MS Dhoni (203) in terms of captaining a side in the IPL hasn’t yet managed to win a single trophy?  The likes of Gautam Gambhir (two titles in 129 matches) and Rohit Sharma (five trophies in 129 matches) have lifted the trophy for more than once despite captaining in lesser matches.

During the World Cup, all eyes will not only be on how Kohli leads the team but also the way he bats. Strangely, this season in the IPL, Kohli the batsman was not his dominant self and his new-found conservatism bewildered some of the keen observers of the game. Kohli scored a 41-ball 53 against CSK in the league stage of the UAE leg but his strike-rate en route from 40 to 50 was questioned by Sanjay Manjrekar. Speaking to ESPNCricinfo, Manjrekar pointed out that Kohli's strike-rate witnessed a sharp decline from 153 to 86 as he crossed the 40-run mark. "I thought there was a different Virat Kohli batting today. He was stepping out to the fast bowlers. He was really batting like a T20 opener, throwing caution to the wind and going down the pitch and stuff that he doesn’t do that much. And come to 40, he drastically slowed down. I couldn’t understand that," Manjrekar had observed perceptively. No one has scored more runs than Kohli in the IPL but his strike rate in the last two seasons (around 120) has been below his career strike rate (nearly 130) and it has hurt the prospect of his team. Needless to say, that the current Indian team can’t afford to see Kohli bat in that fashion in this tournament if they intend to win the world cup after a gap of one and half decade.

Interestingly, in his last post-match presentation RCB captain Kohli so passionately spoke about giving ‘120 percent’. Unfortunately, cricket is yet to find a device which can accurately check if a captain is putting 100 percent or below 100 percent or in Kohli’s case more than hundred percent. Some number of decent runs and wickets are simplest criteria of judging the degree of the greatness of a player and similarly all sporting captains are invariably judged by the number of trophies they win. Cricket is no exception to that or else former South African captain Hansie Cronje (99 wins out of 138 matches) would have been regarded as the most successful captains in the history of the ODIs after Ricky Ponting (ODI captaincy winning percentage of 76.14) as the South African’s winning percentage of 73.10 is only second to Ponting. Ponting without two world cup trophies would have been regarded as same as Cronje. This ‘120 percent’ claim sounds a little hollow but not all is lost as yet for the Indian captain and if he can lift the World Cup trophy on 15th of November, perhaps everyone will forget his poor record as captain in the IPL.