What led to Kohli stepping down as India’s T20 skipper
From team selection disagreements to player complaints, Virat’s exit as captain was imminent
MUMBAI: A way of functioning seen as defiant by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), disagreements over selection, players expressing their dissatisfaction with the captain’s way of doing things, the World Test Championship defeat, R Ashwin’s omission from the fourth Oval Test against England, and the cancellation of the fifth and final Test in Manchester—each of these factors played a role in Virat Kohli announcing that he will step down from T20 captaincy after the upcoming World Cup, according to several people familiar with the events that led to his announcement.
The people said that the ball was first set rolling—as BCCI secretary Jay Shah himself said in a statement on Thursday—about six months ago, soon after India’s historic series win in Australia, when board officials started asking senior players for feedback on Kohli’s leadership. Kohli was in India on paternity leave during the business end of the series, and Ajinkya Rahane led the side.
It also became increasingly clear that there was a communication gap between the captain and at least those players who were not in great form. A player told a board official that “the team delivered in Australia in Kohli’s absence” and “that the dressing room appeared more settled and at ease”, according to one of the people who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Shah spoke of six months of “discussion with the leadership group”, and BCCI president Ganguly said it is a decision taken “keeping in mind future road map”.
Kohli’s management did not respond to texts and calls asking for clarification.
Unilateral picks
Soon after the World Test Championship (WTC) final, which India lost to New Zealand in June, some players in the team felt that Kohli was aloof and high-handed as a leader, and arbitrary in selecting his final XI. Evidence of this, a second person said, was in Kohli speaking about bringing in the “right people with the right mindset to perform” in his post-match presser after the WTC.
“Kohli’s dip in batting form may have contributed but him being eased out of white-ball captainship was eminent and it may have prompted him to make the announcement,” said a former BCCI administrator familiar with the events of the last few weeks.
The people also said that team selections have also been a source of friction between Kohli and BCCI. The board appointing former captain MS Dhoni as “mentor” for the T20 World Cup, with talk of him having a say in selecting the playing XI, was a heavy hint that the it wanted someone to temper Kohli’s unilateral decision-making.
Ashwin’s exclusion
One such decision—not picking an in-form R Ashwin, India’s fourth-highest Test wicket-taker and the world’s leading spinner, for any of the four matches India played in England despite experts unanimously calling for his inclusion—also added to
BCCI’s unhappiness with Kohli’s leadership.
“This year there was an instance in one of the selection meetings where things got quite heated between Virat and the selectors,” said an official from the selection room who asked not to be named. “He (Kohli) ultimately realised that he did not have a vote, but it did not go down well with the selectors.”
Despite being dropped for the four Tests, Ashwin was last week picked for the T20 World Cup squad after four years of being kept out of white-ball cricket. This, the person quoted above said, was a message to Kohli that he could not have things his own way. “Kohli did not want him (Ashwin),” a second person in the selection room added.
Another indication that things weren’t going Kohli’s way was that the selectors sought vicecaptain Rohit Sharma’s views on certain picks for the World T20 squad. Kohli and Sharma have been through a rocky relationship, and called a truce earlier this year—the latter’s record as a T20 captain, both at the Asia Cup in 2018 (which India won) and on five occasions in the Indian Premier League leading the Mumbai Indians to victory, was often cited as evidence of his leadership qualities in the format.
Manchester cancellation The cancellation of the Manchester Test was also seen by the board as defiant, a fourth person said.
The England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) cleared the Indian team to play after all the players tested negative for Covid-19 the day before the scheduled start, a handful of senior players, led by Kohli, negotiated long and hard with BCCI to pull out of the match.
Although Kohli wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to play at Manchester, the blame fell with the captain as BCCI was left to negotiate their way out of a possible dispute resolution with the ECB with complicated financial implications.
Board hits back
For anyone familiar with BCCI’s style of functioning, player power has never prevailed over what the board wants.
For most of Kohli’s tenure as captain, BCCI was run not by board officials but by court-appointed administrators (COA). For the first two years of his captaincy, the COA (which ran BCCI for 33 months from 2016 to 2019) did not interfere with Kohli’s decisions and demands.
Once elected office-bearers returned to BCCI, stories of fault lines within the dressing room began to find their way to the top brass. This even spilled over to discussions on finding India’s new coach.
“Board officials heard in their informal conversations with coaches who could join the Indian set-up in future, that they had reservations in working with Kohli,” said a senior BCCI official, adding that they did not want to play second fiddle to him.
Though Kohli has only stepped away from being the T20 captain—finally of his own accord—there is little certainty that he will be able to keep his ODI captaincy either because the thinking in the board is that the leadership, if split, should be between white and red-ball cricket. “We wish Virat good luck for the World Cup as India’s captain,” BCCI treasurer Arun Dhumal said. “As far as captainship in other formats goes, Virat has shared his views. But we should leave it to the selectors to take a call.”