The Meteoric rise & the unbelievable fall of the super brat - Virat Kohli's inevitable fall from Stardom to an ordinary cricketer

Those who have been watching cricket for a long time and by long I mean more than 4-5 decades , this wouldn't have come as a meekly surprise. I have been watching cricket since 1982 - so almost 40 years when I first set my small steps on the Hallowed Eden Gardens in 1982 - one Indian winter to watch Sunny Gavaskar's men take on Keith Fletcher's Englishmen . Those were the days of pure innocence and thrill of Test Cricket , not to be walloped by the Pajama T-20 and ODI frivolousness. 

Indian Cricket unlike Australian / English/West Indian Cricket has been dominated by Individuals rather than team although its a team sport without an Iota of doubt. The psyche of Indians have been such that they like being dominated in a team sport - history is rich with many examples from the days of Maharaj of Vizianagram to Lala Amarnath to Vijay Merchant to Tiger Pataudi to Sunny bhai up to Viraat now. Such strong personalities have evolved in Indian Cricket that its history had to be templated with individuals while it has remained highly a team sport. 

So why is Virat Kohli's sudden fall creating so much of a hullaballo ? - Is it the first time that a captain has been removed unceremoniously ..  Certainly NO.. The man who has been targeted by a section of the press, ex- cricketers' , many analysts , and cricket lovers' as the Villain for the unceremonious exit of VK  - the Board President SOURAV GANGULY himself faced one of the most humiliating exits as Cricket Captain in 2005 post the Zimbabwe tour after a well documented spat with then India Coach Greg Chappell ( which is part of history now). even after 16 years almost , Indian and world cricket fans' have hardly forgotten one of the most ugly spats in history of Indian Cricket. And how many have forgotten the way KIM HUGHES had to leave captaincy , teary eyed midway through a series on November 1984? And there have been many more instances . SO why is VK's exit so unceremonious ?

 

Virat Kohli represents northern part of India - NCR.  Without being racist and parochial , North people are supposed to be the most aggressive , blunt and sometimes  uncouth of all the races in India - pardon my limitations but they are branded genetically as the most truculent of all the people across corners in India . And VK has shown the ugly belligerent face of Northern India  throughout  his career  - sometimes wearing his heart on his sleeve sometimes taking the raw aggression out on people . Because of the sheer weightage of his raw talent and the fact that he was always pampered and branded as an iconic and once in a lifetime cricketer - more often than not he has got away with ways which often bordered on arrogance and lawlessness rather than assertiveness . Somewhere down the line , the law of KARMA had to catch up some where.

If we are students' of the game then this was  a writing which was getting more and more predominant on the wall. Only a fool would have cared not to read it . The great Sunil Gavaskar once famously said  " Success has many fathers', failure hardly has an orphan ."  How true this has become in VK's sudden & inevitable fall which was slowly but surely taking a form away from our eyes.'

In Indian cricket, captaincy decisions have never been left to the players. Kapil Dev was sacked within a year of winning the 1983 World Cup. Sunil Gavaskar stepped down after winning the World Championship of Cricket in 1985. Sourav Ganguly’s captaincy was taken away in acrimonious circumstances. Even Dhoni, with three world titles in his bag, was given a tap on the shoulder by the then selection committee, when it was felt that a white-ball captaincy change was required. Kohli probably failed to read the room. In another interesting development, the selectors elevated Sharma to Test vice-captaincy, replacing Ajinkya Rahane, although the latter was picked for the three-match series in South Africa. Sharma’s growing stature in the team can offer scope to read between the lines, that phasing out of Kohli, the captain, has begun.

Kohli has been one of India’s most successful white-ball captains. In 95 ODIs, he won 65, giving him a winning percentage of 70-plus. In 45 T20Is, he led India to victory 27 times. Sharma has been Kohli’s longstanding deputy in limited-overs cricket, captaining the team in 10 ODIs and 19 T20Is before he was given full-time charge during the recent three-match home series against New Zealand. He started with a clean sweep. Five IPL titles leading Mumbai Indians made him a shoo-in as Kohli’s successor.

Kohli took over limited-overs captaincy from Dhoni in 2017 and under him India won limited-overs series in every country. But he failed to triumph in ICC events. The closest India came to annexing global silverware was at the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy, where the team lost to Pakistan in the final. The T20 World Cup in UAE this year was probably the nadir; India losing their first two group league games against Pakistan and New Zealand and crashing out of the tournament in the group phase. The BCCI publicly took a kinder view on the team’s T20 World Cup debacle, considering it as “one bad tournament”. But it is learnt that the board wanted a new direction in limited-overs cricket under a new captain. The next T20 World Cup in Australia is less than 12 months away, while India will host the 50-over World Cup a year later. The BCCI and the selection committee clearly wanted to give Sharma time to build the squad for the two upcoming ICC events. A form slump also didn’t do Kohli any favors. Over the past two years, he has scored 560 runs in 12 ODIs without a century. His average during this period is 46.66, well below his career average of 59.07. In 20 T20Is during the same period, he has scored 594 runs at 49.50, while in 13 Tests in the last two years, he made 599 runs at an average of 26.04. Shastri, however, had defended his captain’s lean patch, citing bubble fatigue. “In the last 24 months, they (players) have been home for 25 days. I don’t care who you are, if your name is Bradman and you are in a bubble, your average will come down because you are human,” he had said.

 

 If we have noticed Indian Cricket as ardent students' of the game , then we would be knowing that BCCI - the all important and all powerful ALMA MATER of cricketers' have never liked the overbearing gigantic image of the cricketers' . It is they who make or break the cricketers.' Sourav Ganguly could become Sourav Ganguly because he had the unflinching support of Late Jagmohan Dalmiya. Once Dalmiya's powers were diminished , Ganguly was never the same force. Same for MSD whose God father was N Srinivasan. MSD , the Godman that he was , he could only be because of Srini. It is BCCI which gave birth to Frankenstein's and its the same BCCI which had cut their wings, when they found the flapping too unpalatable for them. In case of Kohli, along with his abrasiveness was mixed the fact the way he got rid of Anil Kumble as Head Coach of India most acrimoniously. That was one of the BLACK days of Indian Cricket post the Ganguly - Chappell Saga  . And Mind you - Kumble's good friend DADA was not the BCCI President then. The way Shastri-Kohli worked like Mafia Kings' to take Indian Cricket forward , definitely had irked a lot of people within the power cauldron of BCCI. But time was in their favor - India was winning all or most of the bilateral series and the away wins at Australia and England .  However , law of averages caught up with Kohli in what became his worst slump of form be it T-20, ODI or tests. And that dealt  a telling blow in his captaincy dreams as BCCI ran out of patience. Also Rohit's growing stature in the dressing room cannot be written off at all. Once Shastri' term was over it was a matter of time Kohli would be shown the door . Its surprising that a man like Kohli failed to understand the writing on the wall.

  

Let us not mistake it: intrigue there is aplenty. India have essentially removed - statistically - one of the most successful captains in ODI cricket, a 33-year-old, who openly and calculatedly made public his desire to keep captaining India in ODIs when he gave up the T20I leadership three months back. The change is not made with long-term future in mind: in fact, the new captain is a year-and-a-half older. It is hard to think of an Indian Captain  who achieved full - time captaincy for the first time   when older than Rohit Sharma's 34 and a half.. Anil Kumble got it at 37,  but he was clearly a stop-gap as MSD found his bearings as ODI skipper. That appointment was necessitated by Rahul Dravid's resignation; this one has been initiated by the BCCI.

Any captaincy change in Indian cricket has to be ratified by the board president. So right now, the selectors and the BCCI president clearly believe there is a better captain in Indian cricket than the one under whom India won five matches for every two they lost and under whom they went to the final and the semi-final of the two world events they took part in. However, it is possible too that the selectors and the BCCI have looked beyond the record. Apart from the T20 World Cups, which are a tough format, you expect any Indian team - given the quality of any given side - to make the knockouts of world events because they are designed to discourage upsets. Having said that, it can't be ignored that India did so comprehensively. 

Kohli, unlike MSD and  like Ganguly before him simply didn't believe that he needed to jump before being pushed. Dhoni the most intelligent of the lot before he got the rap , gave up the ODI captaincy in 2017 the moment he realised he was not the same force. Coach Dravid has previously been caught in similar crosshairs when the BCCI last sacked an India captain. This is different. Kohli still has the Test captaincy. Kohli still has the record and the fitness. There is no coach whom players see as a threat. Kohli the captain has backed Rohit the batter; there is no reason to suspect Rohit the captain doesn't feel the same about Kohli the batter. Although purely from the outside, it has always seemed that Kohli and Rohit are one similar batter too many for a T20 top three.

Most importantly, India remain a highly successful side in all formats never mind the T20 World Cup exit. Equally importantly, this is done well in time for Rohit to get a certain number of games in so that he can build his own side for the 2023 World Cup. It also gives Kohli more time to work on his batting. It is not appreciated nearly enough how taxing it can be to captain India in three formats and also an IPL side.

Yet this is a transition that needs to be handled delicately, but not one that Dravid, Kohli and Rohit can't see through.