How easily India lost on the final day in Sydney actually underlines even more strongly that it was only Bumrah who had made this series competitive. Regardless of the performances of Jaiswal, Reddy, Siraj, Sundar, Rahul and whoever else delivered occasionally, the series result would have been 5-0 to Australia if Bumrah and rain were absent.
However, that same team, without Kohli, would have competed better, on the evidence of whenever Kohli has been absent from this Indian team in recent times (Australia 2020/21, against England 2024). His toxic presence is almost as significant as the handicap India plays with when he is included in the first XI since 2020 (which weakens the team even beyond the handicap, as the team often makes compensatory selections in the hope of overcoming the batting deficiency). A player who has played 39 Tests since 2020 (32% of his long international career) without justifying selection in the first XI (a batting average of 30.7 since 2020 as a specialist batsman) – this is not just the longest rope by a mile in the history of Test cricket, it is a scandal beyond sport.
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There are no signs of him being dropped for the England tour; in fact, if anything there are signs that he will be captain on that tour (which will now be provided as a reason to have him in the XI, regardless of his performances). Which is laughable, because he actually had a very poor day as captain today. For all his bluster and aggressive performative gesticulations, he has always been a captain unwilling to take too many risks. Here, given the absence of Bumrah (which meant the main bowlers would get tired very soon), he should have gone on an all-out attack to take a couple of early wickets at any cost. That attempt would have charged up the bowlers and fielders also, but no. And then there was that quintessentially tasteless moment where he emptied out his pockets for the crowd, suggesting he wasn’t carrying sandpaper. Full circle from how in the 2019 World Cup in England, when he had gesticulated to the crowd to stop booing Steve Smith who was returning from that exact same ban. What an embarrassing uncouth disgrace Virat Kohli is today.
In fact, Virat Kohli and Jay Shah as India’s most high profile cricket names today makes India a laughing stock in the cricket world. It is like an elite capture of a national team, which has bought out the media. How much that resembles modern-day India, and its ruling government, is not a coincidence, of course.
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Meanwhile many of the sold-out, cowardly and/or clueless Indian journalists covering this sport keep mentioning that Kohli is the most successful Indian captain, as if preparing the ground for his return to captaincy. Let’s revisit this with some context.
Let’s keep aside his disgraceful behaviour in his last tour as captain, in South Africa (Dec ’21/Jan ’22). Besides his poor selection calls on that tour, there was that untenable public meltdown in the middle, when the opposing captain was not given out via DRS. In no era of the sport, in no country, would such a disgracefully petulant act result in this player being considered for captaincy again.
Instead, let’s look at the context of his 40 wins out of 68 Tests as captain, and whether being the #1 Test team in the world during his tenure is proof of his great captaincy skills. His captaincy coincided with a period where South Africa imploded (due to their quota system, which they have rolled back since), Australia struggled for a while (the most in that decade, due to the sandpaper controversy) and England made some very poor choices (that eventually was combated by the ushering in of the Bazball era). New Zealand hardly got any overseas tours to get better in alien conditions while West Indies, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka were not particularly competitive Test teams, especially against India, due to transitional issues. And India did not have to face Pakistan in Tests.
If you consider India’s biggest challenges during Kohli’s period (mostly the SENA countries, as they catchily call South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia now), let’s examine the series results:
In Aus 2014/15 – India lost 0-2
In SL 2015 – India won 2-1 (a significant win, given how rarely India had won a Test series in SL)
Against Aus in 2017 – India won 2-1 (However, Rahane captained India in the last series-deciding Test)
In SA 2018 – India had already lost 0-2 before the final Test.
In Eng 2018 – lost 1-4
In Aus 2018/19 – won 2-1 (Aus were without their 2 best batsmen – Smith and Warner banned and were going through their most tumultuous transition in this century)
In NZ 2020 – lost 0-2 (got thrashed, actually)
In Aus 2020/21 – lost the only Test he captained. From there, Rahane captained India to an unforgettable 2-1 triumph.
WTC final 2021 – lost to NZ
In Eng 2021 – leading 2-1 against a poor England side (that was losing everything at the time), a series that due to his team’s unforgivable backing out initiated by him in the last Test eventually finished 2-2 as the deciding Test a year later, when they were soundly thrashed by Bazball England.
In SA 2022 – lost 1-2.
Does the above paint the picture of someone who captained with distinction? But that’s the thing about stats – remove context, and you can manipulate any narrative. In this case, it was just a question of Kohli captaining India against a lot of weaker teams, many matches in Indian conditions, and bolstering those numbers. Speaking of which, it’s worth examining Pujara’s role as player under Kohli captaincy – when Pujara produced series defining performances, consistently outperforming Kohli in the big moments (most notably Sri Lanka 2015, against Australia in 2017, in Australia 2018/19 and again in Australia 2020/21). Pujara’s generational contributions (for which he does not get enough credit) were the biggest reason why India got some good results under Kohli’s captaincy, and the pace attack that also was built (thanks primarily to what IPL threw up).
On the other hand, Kohli’s poor handling of Kuldeep Yadav almost destroyed his career. Rahane, while captaining the series-defining Test against Australia in 2017 due to Kohli’s injury, ignored Kohli and included Kuldeep in that match (where he contributed to a famous victory) – this also apparently led to a cooling off between Rahane and Kohli. In his last series as captain, in South Africa, Kohli was again injured in the second Test; Rahul captained and Hanuma Vihari played in Kohli’s place, averaged 60 in both innings, but was dropped to accommodate Kohli in the last Test, that India lost. Vihari was another player treated shabbily by him. And then, what he did to Ashwin in England in 2021 should never be forgotten.
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Truth is, Kohli has always been a mediocre captain (with a damaging streak in him) immensely helped by the circumstances. It can be argued that any team with such a potent pace attack would have done well in Test cricket. It is easily forgotten now that India had already touched #1 in Tests before Kohli became captain, in a tougher era of Test cricket. You have to judge a captain from the starting point to really understand his impact. The idea of bracketing him as captain with Graeme Smith, Ricky Ponting, Steve Waugh and Clive Lloyd because of his win percentage (in the most result-oriented decade in Test history) is absurd. Absolutely illiterate. He’s not even in the same league as Dhoni and Ganguly as captain or Gavaskar and Kapil Dev before them. MAK Pataudi, Ajit Wadekar and even Bishan Bedi did not have even half as good a team for overseas conditions as he did, or their results would have been grossly different.
Kohli’s mediocrity as a captain gets much more amply exposed in white ball cricket, where the formats tend to even out strengths and weaknesses. He captained India in 3 ICC world events – the 2017 Champions Trophy (where they reached the final, where they were soundly beaten by Pakistan), the 2019 ODI World Cup (where they lost in the semifinal but worse, allowed Dhoni’s batting position to sabotage the side) and the 2021 T20 World Cup (where they lost comprehensively in the group stages). This is a mediocre record at best, for a country with the sample size of talent available in the IPL era. Speaking of which, he remains the only major Indian player who has been unable to win a single IPL title for his franchise RCB, despite getting the longest run as captain – this is not a coincidence. Nor did his franchise unearth any enduring new talent, like Mumbai Indians did, with Bumrah and the Pandya brothers. There is absolutely no visionary streak in him, never was.
Kohli’s status as a world-class batsman is indisputable for 6-7 years (between 2012 and 2018). But beyond that, he is the biggest scam in the history of Indian cricket, its biggest fraud. An ongoing scam, if he travels to England in June as a player. An untenable and unbearable travesty if he goes as captain. Indian cricket’s shame would touch its nadir if he does, historically so.
