The curious case of Virat Kohli, the captain

Recently India won back to back Test series outside the sub-continent (considering India won the England Test series as they ended with a 2-1 lead over England before the series got cancelled due to Covid-19). These wins along with being one of the finalists of World Test Championship, and also including the Test series win against Australia in 2018-19 tour, have made Virat Kohli the most successful Test captain of India ever. Virat etched his name amongst the greats of Test cricket like Graeme Smith, Steve Waugh, Ricky Ponting, and Clive Lloyd on the back of these historical successes. 

But when it comes to limited-overs cricket, Virat is not someone to be revered by many as a great leader. Even most are of the opinion that his limited-overs leadership is not effective at all. Now this is extremely ironic, isn’t it? How can a captain who is so successful in Test cricket look so amateur in white-ball cricket? Let’s try to decode this strange situation.

Not many people realise that Test cricket is a bowlers’ game. No score can guarantee a win, there are no maximum overs to be bowled. There are only two things that have a limit in Test cricket, the number of days to be played and the number of wickets to be taken. Even if a team scores 700 or 1000 in an innings, but they fail to take the 20 wickets of the opposition team, the match will end in a draw. You have to take wickets to win a Test match, unlike in white-ball cricket where you can bowl economically and make the other team play out all the overs before reaching the target.

The captain’s role in Test cricket becomes insignificant if a team hasn’t got a minimum of two or three wicket-taking bowlers. Why at least two or three? Well, how often has a single bowler taken all the ten wickets in an innings of a Test match? Exactly, only two times. And to win a Test series, the bowlers have to be able to do that consistently in 3-4 matches straight. So when a team isn’t blessed with such a lethal bowling attack, no captain can do anything really.

Now coming back to our situation, Virat Kohli is one of those luckiest captains who is blessed with a bowling attack that can wreak havoc on any batting lineup on any pitch in any part of the world, and that too quite consistently. They got speed, they got swing, they got the carrom ball, they got the wrist spinners, they got the finger spinners, they got the lethal yorkers, and to execute all of these, they got time in Test matches.

Moreover, I have always felt that in Test cricket the captain’s job is much easier than in limited-overs cricket. You get two lengthy breaks during each day’s play to analyse what went wrong or what went right and how to plan out the next session. At the end of each day you get a night’s time to regroup and make corrections and with all the available technology these days, where every movement of a player is recorded and every statistic is there at your fingertips, even if a session doesn’t play out well, there are enough opportunities to make amends and rethink your course.

Now compare that to a limited over a match where one wrong bowling change in one over at the death can cost you the whole match. The fewer mistakes you make in white-ball cricket, the more successful you are. The real merit of a captain can only be seen in limited-overs cricket. You don’t get much time to make the right calls, you don’t get the luxury to try your bowlers out and check whose day it is. You need to put the best field placement as often the margin between a win and a loss is just a run. You need to take instant decisions when an opposition batter is tearing through your bowling. You need an extremely fast and watchful mind as a captain to counter the opposition’s game plan quickly by changing plans and executing a new one on the spot when things don’t go your way.

Test cricket is the test of a player’s mindset, skills, and stamina. It’s tough on the players, both mentally and physically. But to measure a leader’s ability, I think Test cricket is not a very fair measuring scale. While all of these may not be the actual reasons why we see such a contradiction between Virat Kohli’s fortune as captains in different formats, with my limited knowledge of the game, I can’t think of any other possible reasons to explain this great irony of him being one of the most successful Test captains as well as the captain who hasn’t yet won a single major trophy in white-ball cricket, including franchise cricket, since he took over the reins.

Views are personal.

Author: Satadal Kakoty