No winners in Board games
BCCI has the right to choose who will lead India, but it has handled the change badly
The power games that have dogged the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s corridors of power spilled on to the cricket field this week when the sport entered hitherto-uncharted territory. The weeks-long intrigue surrounding the future of Virat Kohli as captain in the game’s shorter formats snowballed into a battle of narratives between him and Sourav Ganguly, a former captain who is now the president of the board. At a media interaction, Kohli refuted Ganguly’s claim that they had spoken about his leaving the T20 captaincy and detailed the circumstances of his ODI demotion, conveyed to him during a call with the selectors.
This isn’t a simple case of counter-narratives. It is a public announcement that the trust between India’s most successful batsman of this generation, and the all-powerful body that runs the sport, has been broken irreparably.
Kohli is statistically India’s most successful captain in history with a win rate of more than 59% in 66 Tests, over 70% in 95 ODIs, and over 64% in 50 T20Is; and an overall win rate of 63.5% in 211 matches across the three formats. To put this in perspective, MS Dhoni’s overall win rate was 53.61% in 335 matches, and Ganguly’s win rate was 49.48% in 196 matches. But while win-rate is the standard metric to measure captaincy, it is not the best one because it doesn’t factor in the conditions or the opposition. In Kohli’s case, there were several valid reasons for a change at the helm. Despite his record, the Indian team did not do well in ICC tournaments under his charge, and nor did Royal Challengers Bangalore win any IPL title; there were reports of rumblings within the dressing room; and several decisions taken by him about the playing XI were questioned by experts for flying in the face of logic. In any case, once he stepped down as T20 skipper, and given the IPL success story of Rohit Sharma who was appointed to replace him, having two captains for white-ball cricket was untenable. Finally, the decision on who will lead is ultimately the prerogative of the BCCI’s selectors.
But part of the issue at hand is not whether it was the right decision, but how it was communicated, and how the saga was allowed to fester. The question is of a sense of propriety, of the importance of open conversation, of not pitting seniors against each other, and about the importance of making a clean break. Other captains have been removed in similar ways during the course of Indian cricket history. Ganguly, the skipper, was himself a victim of an opaque administration during his feud with coach Greg Chappell in the 2000s. It would be wise if the body he now oversees does not follow the same management style.