Table of Contents

Why does no one talk about Virat Kohli’s performances anymore?

As India lost the match first ODI at Green Park, Kanpur against visiting South Africa everybody has started blaming Indian captain MS Dhoni. There is a buzz in the Indian cricket circle that the reason of India’s defeat was MS Dhoni’s captaincy. But, we Indians have failed to come up with a logical conclusion. Why does every captain have to go through a hurdle at the twilight of their career?

What did MS Dhoni not give us? He gave us three ICC trophies, which is still a dream for a team like South Africa. But, people are blindly criticizing him for the defeat against Bangladesh, and T20 series against South Africa. Everybody has become a cricket scholar in India but forget the poor performance of some players, especially Virat Kohli.

The imperative is that the voice for Virat Kohli’s captaincy in all formats of the game has been growing. The reason is MS Dhoni’s captaincy is no sharper like before. But, one captain can’t win a match alone with his strategy. You need your right men to execute the decisions perfectly. After Dhoni quit the Test captaincy in Australia earlier this year India has played 16 ODIs. In those ODIs, only one batsman had consistently been performing that was Rohit Sharma.

Virat Kohli, whose name everybody is advocating for the captaincy job, was the worst run scorer among the top Indian batsmen in this year. In the last ODI, we have seen that in the over between 33 and 40 India’s run momentum of scoring run’s was slow. MS Dhoni while addressing the post matches press conference said India’s one of the reasons behind the defeat was the batting between 33 and 40 over. Indirectly he blamed Virat Kohli. The future of Indian batting has thrown his wicket when India was needed to win the match.

At the same time Rohit, who scored a brilliant 150 while chasing 304 runs, was exhausted so got out. But, for how many innings will Virat continue his lean phase in ODI cricket.

The popular concept is that whenever Virat got the chance to lead the team he performed. In the Adelaide Test in the last December, Virat scored hundred in both innings, where India had a chance to take the lead of the series. But, as Virat has gone India’s tailender collapsed. Then the first full series came against Sri Lanka where Virat led the team being the full-time captain. He scored hundred in Sri Lanka and produced two more prolific innings for winning causes. But, as he donned the blue under the captaincy of MS Dhoni his performance touched the historic low. Kohli’s only memorable performance came against Pakistan during the India’s first match in the 2015 World Cup at Adelaide Oval. After that innings, he has thrown his wickets after settling down on the crease.

But, now the question is why did we forget to keep Virat Kohli’s innings in track? The answer is we are so obsessed in Dhoni’s captaincy and his performance.

India’s bowling department without Mohammad Shami is toothless. But, at Indian pitches the famed South African were also battered by Rohit Sharma. India could restrict South Africa inside 250 if Ravichandran Ashwin did not get injured. The spin wizard could bowl only 4.4 overs in the match conceding just 14 runs and took 1 wicket. His absence freed AB de Villiers to make a mockery of Indian bowlers. Ashwin is ruled from the entire series so that will also make Indian suffer.

But, still India could easily win the match if either Virat Kohli or Suresh Raina stayed for few overs at the crease. Because if they could hit few boundaries the pressure over Dhoni, who scored 31 runs from 30 balls, could get released.

But, Kohli, who denied playing at no. 4 in the team meeting before the match displayed his selfish nature while coming to bat as he scored 11run off 18 balls. How could one player expect he will play at the same position every day. South Africa captain used to bat at no. 5 before the world cup matches although his actual batting position is no.4. The imperative is that players like AB de Villiers, MS Dhoni, Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar have dedicated their life for the country while Virat seems to play for his own benefit. That is not cricket. Cricketer should play for their country not for their cause all the time.

The reason behind the call of Virat captaincy is that the Test series victory in Sri Lanka after 22 years.So, is only one series victory is enough to polarize the views? Why is Virat doing so much harakiri? He is wasting so much time on how not to play big innings. The great cricketer never does it. The time is not over for him, he has the ability to win the series for the country. It is not the perfect time to think about captaincy, and that is not your job to decide the selection committee will take the call on captaincy.

Have a look at the performances of MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli in 2015 so far