Team India’s home series against New Zealand in November will mark the beginning of a new chapter in the country’s proud cricketing history. Under the coaching of Rahul Dravid, the team’s newly appointed head coach, and the leadership of Rohit Sharma, India’s latest T20I captain; the men-in-blue will be looking forward to carry on its dominance from the era that has just gone by.
Indian cricket’s dominance in the Kohli-Shastri era
That era, of course, was one where the team played some really good cricket under Virat Kohli’s captaincy and Ravi Shastri’s coaching. While India had a prolonged streak of bad luck across ICC tournaments in the Kohli-Shastri era, there’s no denying the fact that the team managed to come up with a slew of commendable performances in the bilateral series.
In fact, it was under Kohli and Shastri when the Indian squad reached its pinnacle of domination in test cricket and managed to win series in England and Australia. Virat Kohli’s fondness towards the classic format of the game has been a great endorsement for test cricket all across the world. At this point of time, it wouldn’t be completely unfair to say that test matches might just be Virat Kohli’s favorite form of cricket.
But it seems as though Kohli’s appeal towards test cricket could lead him to make some major decisions in the coming days. Over on a recent interaction with India, Shastri shared some insights about his former captain and his team. As per the former India coach, Kohli’s utter commitment towards playing red-ball cricket might force him to make tough, some workload-management decisions.
“In red-ball cricket, India has been the No1 team in the world for the last 5 years under Virat Kohli. So unless he wants to give up or if he is mentally fatigued and says he wants to focus on his batting. Which can happen in the near future, don’t think it will happen immediately – but it can happen,” Shastri told India Today.
“Kohli might quit ODI captaincy to focus on tests and batting”- Ravi Shastri
The highlight of Shastri’s interview, however, was when he suggested that Kohli might soon relinquish ODI captaincy as well to focus on test matches. According to Shastri, Virat, like many legends of the game before him, may solely want to focus on his batting at some point of his career.
“The same (quitting captaincy) might happen with the ODIs as well. He might say he wants to focus just on Test captaincy. It is his mind and body that will make that decision. He won’t be the first, there are many players in the past who have had very successful tenures and captains. But then, they gave it up to focus on batting,” Shastri speculated.
It will be interesting to see how well Shastri’s insights about King Kohli holds up in the future. For the time being though, India fans would want the King to rest and recover well from the cramped schedule that he has been through. Kohli won’t be back in action latest before December 3, when India square off against New Zealand in the latter game of the two-test series at the Wankhede Stadium.