Former India cricket Sanjay Manjrekar opined that Virat Kohli wanted to make himself unsackable as captain. That’s the reason why the Indian test captain made a surprising decision to step down from Test captaincy.
On Friday Virat Kohli made an announcement that he stepped down from Test captaincy with an immediate effect. The decision came after India lost a test series against South Africa by 1-2 as the hosts beat India by 7 wickets in the Cape Town Test.
Kohli led India in 68 Test matches
Reflecting on his captaincy tenure, Sanjay Manjrekar pointed that Kohli made quite a few decisions in the last few months. At the conclusion of the IPL season in October, he stepped down from RCB’s captaincy. A few days later, he also stated that he would step away from the responsibility of T20I captaincy to manage his workload. Then in December, he was sacked from the ODI captaincy as well.
“It’s come one after the other in a very short span of time – giving up the white-ball captaincy and IPL captaincy as well. This also was unexpected, but it is interesting that all these three resignations of important positions have come so quickly one after the other,” Manjrekar spoke to ESPNCricinfo.
He also added that Kohli wouldn’t want to take his captaincy to the point where he would be sacked from the position.
“I think, in some way, he wants to make himself unsackable as captain. When he gets that vibe that his captaincy is under threat, he tends to quit,” he said.
Manjrekar also pointed that there might be a chance that Virat hadn’t felt at home with the current coaching set-up. Notable that after T20 World Cup, Ravi Shastri and Bharat Arun decided to step down from their coaching positions, citing the bio-bubble fatigue. And Rahul Dravid and Paras Mhambrey replaced them since the series against New Zealand.
“The landscape is changing, the scenario around Virat Kohli that allowed him to be himself and flourish. Ravi Shastri coming in. He was uncomfortable when Anil Kumble was the coach and once Shastri and the support staff came in, he felt comfortable. The new coach (Rahul Dravid) is no Ravi Shastri. He would have got some inkling of the kind of support he was going to get,” Manjrekar further said.
“The regime change in the BCCI also has something to do with all these important announcements that Virat has made. Clearly, a guy who finds himself outside his comfort zone. Individually, his batting is not at its best. All that has just added up. He is not in a great space at the moment. These are all emotional decisions that one can understand.” he added.
Kohli captained India in 68 matches with 40 wins and 17 losses. He took over the job in January 2015 when MS Dhoni decided to call of his test career midway in the series against Australia.