Kohli's Captaincy era ends.

 Every captain has a shelf life. Kohli lived it to its entirety.

Fall out with the board, ending the year by bowing out of WT20 prematurely, beginning the year by losing the overseas series are enough signs to bid adieu for 7+ years of captaincy life. Kohli nailed his resignation.

Kohli has been brilliant in imparting the fitness culture in the Indian setup that allowed the players to perform to their potential and beyond to produce the desired results (particularly overseas). It is heartening to see our fast bowlers look fitter, meaner, stronger and outperform the Australian/English counterparts who are traditionally blessed with larger built and stronger fitness compared to Indians. Kohli gets the credit for cracking the code and we as fans could enjoy India’s transformation and do extremely well in the overseas arena for the last 3 – 4 years. Remember its only few years ago, Indians were mocked for being “Lions at home and Mice abroad”. As a fan, one would be indebted to Kohli to get rid of the tag. Not just that, India turned into one of the best tourist nations in the recent years.

On the flip side, he constantly threaded arrogance in the name of aggression. Sometimes his tantrums were too hot to handle. His team selections were questionable many a times (even the most recent series that India lost to SA, it is because of poor team selection). He dumped players when he should have backed them and backed players when he should be dumping them. There were constant murmurs from players on his poor man management skills. The fall out with Kumble was poor taste. Most importantly it’s a shame that Kohli could not pull off a single ICC trophy in any of the format (WTC, WT20, WC2019) or even IPL Trophy despite captaining for 7 long years. That sums up the story.

It is easier to Captain Tests compared to Limited overs format. He will stand tall for his success in TEST arena as skipper and will be criticized for the lack of trophies in the limited overs arena.

Bottomline: A champion skipper without a championship win to boast.

 

PS: Who knows if he could introspect his short comings and come up with a better version, there could be a second wind.

CrazyCricketLover