It’s taken all of 48 games, and less than five years — but Virat Kohli is already India’s most successful captain in the 87-year Test history of the nation. The 2-0 cakewalk over West Indies lifted Kohli’s win tally to 28; that’s one more than MS Dhoni, seven more than Sourav Ganguly, twice as many as Mohammed Azharuddin, and two more than Sunil Gavaskar, MAK Pataudi and Rahul Dravid put together.
If the win-loss ratio is a better indicator, well, only Ganguly (1.6) and Dhoni (1.5) are even half as good as Kohli, whose record reads an astonishing 2.8 since taking over the reins from Dhoni during the tour of Australia in 2014-15.
The more you dive into the statistics, the finer captain Kohli emerges: His win-loss ratio at home is a staggering 15 — the highest in Test history, with a minimum qualification of 20 home Tests as captain. Away from home, his 13 wins put him joint-fifth on the all-time list; with him in-charge, India have reclaimed their world number one status, and stayed put there since October 2016. Only Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting have overseen more wins in their first 48 Tests as captain.
This isn’t to say, of course, that success as a leader lies in the numbers, for the intangibles, quite often, tend to outlast the tangibles when it comes to assessing leadership. Ganguly, for instance, will always be remembered as the captain who taught India how to dream (and win outside Asia), while Ajit Wadekar, despite overseeing only four wins, has his place saved in history for being the first Indian captain to win Test series in West Indies and England (in one glorious year, at that).
So where, then, does Kohli lie at this point of his captaincy tenure? While he’s already undeniably among India’s better captains of all-time, what will it take for captain Kohli’s regime to leave an indelible imprint on the history of Indian Test cricket?
Blessed with a battery like never before
Let’s get that out of the way right at the top; never before has an Indian team been armed with an arsenal of fast bowlers like the current crop.
Since the beginning of 2018 — which is when Jasprit Bumrah was unleashed on the Test world — three Indian pacers have taken more than 50 Test wickets. No other side in the world has more than two pacers with 50+ wickets in the same time-frame. Bumrah and Ishant Sharma average below 20, Shami concedes a little over 25 runs per wicket.
Virat Kohli is India's most successful Test skipper. AFP
In this one aspect alone, Kohli can consider himself a fortunate man. How differently would we look at Dhoni’s tenure had Zaheer Khan not hobbled off the field on the opening day at Lord’s in 2011?
A burgeoning crop of brutish bowlers, fit and firing at the same time, is a luxury unprecedented for any Indian captain, and to be fair to Kohli, he has always admitted to the same, just as he did in the moments after the second Test at Sabina Park.
"Yes, you can score as many runs as you want, but if you look at these guys running in an putting their heart in… I mean Shami’s spell today, Bumrah after having a small niggle, Ishant bowling his heart out… I don’t think without these bowlers it would have been possible."
Let the multi-pronged fast-bowling assembly line not be held as an argument against Kohli, though — you work with what you have, and while past captains might look at this marvelous assembly with envy, Kohli’s line of credit comes in his handling and management of his surplus stock.
Tactical ground, not the most sound?
What Kohli can be stood guilty of, however, is a heightened sense of excitement that can, at times, blur judgment.
The mind immediately goes to Perth, on India’s now-etched-in-stone summer Down Under at the end of 2018 — but at the Perth Stadium, India had almost blown their shot at history. The air of anticipation, coupled with the buzz of a 1-0 lead from Adelaide, had seen Kohli field a four-pronged pace attack.
India had gone into a game without a specialist spinner for only the third time in their Test history. At the end of Day 1, part-timer Hanuma Vihari was their most successful bowler; by the end of the Test match, Nathan Lyon had eight wickets and the Man-of-the-Match honours to his name.
It’s not a one-off either; misreading of conditions was a commonality to India’s year on the road in 2018 — the unprecedented series win in Australia could easily have sat along with equally massive victories in England and South Africa had India’s tactical game been a little more on point.
At Lord’s, Kohli and the think-tank decided to go with two spinners and ‘unleash’ Kuldeep Yadav on a pitch that had been under covers, with wet conditions around for almost the length of the four-day-long Test. Kuldeep was only called upon to deliver nine wicketless overs in an innings drubbing.
In South Africa earlier that year, India kept vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane outside the XI in favour of Rohit Sharma, and by the time they corrected their wrong, the series had been lost. Even more baffling was the call to drop Bhuvneshwar Kumar for the second Test at Centurion — after he had been India’s best bowler and second-best batsman in the series opener at Cape Town.
These errors would be bad enough even in a previous era; with the amount of data and technology available to use, and in a professional setup, they qualify as unacceptable, and rarely, as you notice from the results of the games mentioned, do they go unpunished.
The leader swells the batsman’s legend
One factor that would have bothered some observers of Indian cricket at the time Kohli was being appointed captain was the potential knock-on effect captaincy would have on his batting — and scars from the past might have inspired cynicism.
After all, the man Kohli was anointed successor to — one Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar — had infamously cited the toll of captaincy on his batting when relinquishing his duties in the late '90s. Indeed, the Test batting averages for all three of India’s holy trinity — Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly — show a notable dip in their tenures as captain.
Tendulkar averaged 51.35 as captain, as compared to 54.16 when not captaining the side; Dravid’s mark slid to 44.51 from 53.73; Ganguly’s to 37.66 from 45.15.
Kohli, however, has been a polar opposite. Having averaged a not-so-great 41.13 in his years coming up the ranks, the 30-year-old has seen his batting numbers explode to stratospheric levels, and averages 61.19 as captain — almost a full 10 points clear of the second-best average for any Indian Test captain.
Even compared to present-day world standards, Kohli stands in a league of select few. Only three players better his Test average since December 2014, keeping a minimum qualification of 10 matches (Steven Smith, Kane Williamson and Adam Voges).
A calmer presence, but not quite devoid of emotional bursts
The now 30-year-old Kohli is clearly not the bursting-at-all-seams-at-all-times persona he was in his nascent years in international cricket. Age obviously plays a part, while Kohli himself has attributed his more at-peace state of mind to companionship.
But has there been a more animated captain, in the modern game, or in the years gone by? Not like it’s a no-go territory for someone designated with authority, or that it doesn’t come with its own plusses.
Take Bumrah’s hat-trick in the Jamaica Test, as an example. A pragmatic approach, say on the lines of Dhoni, would have suggested going with the bowler when he didn’t get quite optimistic about an lbw review despite being on a hat-trick. Kohli, on the other hand, would have none of it, and as a result, played a vital role in the accomplishment of something that had only been witnessed twice by an Indian bowler in 534 prior Tests.
Is it being harsh on Kohli’s reviewing abilities to suggest he decided to take matters upstairs out of the excitement of a prospective hat-trick, and not calculation? Going by India’s track record when it comes to DRS — especially the drop in successful reviews when it comes to the longest format, where there is no Dhoni to go to — I would think not.
The road ahead: Can captain Kohli match batsman Kohli’s status?
Captaincy, of course, is built on individual characteristics — and so, it does become a case of ‘to each their own’. Exuberance and energy are keys to the composition of Kohli the man, and so he would only be cheating himself — and, as a result, his team — by not being who he is.
And if he were to conform to conventions, who’s to say he would have been half as successful as he has been so far, both as player and captain?
As he nears 50 matches as Test captain — a feat only achieved by Dhoni among Indians — Kohli will take immense pride in the victories his unit has been able to garner, and the benchmarks they have created for Indian cricket.
But being the driven, ever-so-hungry competitor he naturally is, Kohli will know there were missed chances at reaching the further uncharted ground — and that will keep him charged for the next however-many matches.
And if he does manage to blend that insatiable desire with the lessons of the first 50 Tests for say another 50, India’s 32nd Test captain may well be regaled as their greatest ever.
from Firstpost Sports Latest News https://ift.tt/2MS9tdv
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