As Virat Kohli bows out of T20 captaincy, time to take stock and reinvent

Virat Kohli isn’t the sort who likes to fade into the background, leads by example, and this format was the only one where he couldn’t do it.

In the end, Virat Kohli’s T20 captaincy and India’s campaign in the World Cup concluded without any fireworks. Neither was bad, even if both are now shadowed by failure. Kohli has rightfully taken pride in the team’s bouncebackability — a catchphrase of sorts for Indian cricket in the Kohli era — but the slip-ups will hurt when he looks back at his reign. The choice of out-of-form batsmen and absence of in-form bowlers was almost forced on him by the timing of the squad’s selection for the T20 World Cup. It was clear from the outset that it was up to Rohit Sharma and K L Rahul to carry India and once both failed in the first two games, India found themselves pushed out.

Over the years, Kohli’s captaincy improved, under the guidance of coach Ravi Shastri, but it’s in the team balance and composition where he faltered. He might have made tons of runs in T20 but he is not really at home in this format in contrast with the match-winning destructiveness that he displays with such skill and ease in other formats. Perhaps that too played its part in his captaincy. He isn’t the sort who likes to fade into the background, leads by example, and this format was the only one where he couldn’t do it. On field, as long as MS Dhoni was there, Kohli chose the best option for the team as a boundary rider and let Dhoni handle the details. It did show, though, that just like his batting, he could curb his ego and do what was best for the team.

Throughout Kohli’s captaincy, there have been recurring murmurs about the pull-and-tug with team-mates, especially the senior ones. In some ways, he was almost impatient in getting them to move on with his philosophy, but would eventually relent. It’s a testament to how far the team has grown in recent years that the benchmark seems to be ICC tournaments. It was taken as a given that the team would reach the knockout stage in big-ticket events — a far cry from earlier days when the path to that stage seemed much rockier. Ironically, in his last tournament, India couldn’t get there.

This editorial first appeared in the print edition on November 9, 2021 under the title ‘The last T20′.

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