When Virat Kohli became the captain of Team India after Mahendra Singh Dhoni, it was felt that he would bring new energy to the team and under his captaincy the team would achieve new achievements. This proved to be true to a great extent and the statistics also testify that Kohli is one of the most successful captains in the world in all three formats, but it is also true that statistics do not show the other side of the picture. When it comes to ICC tournaments, captain Kohli’s bag seems empty.
In ICC tournaments, he starts appearing as a simple captain. Despite captaining in three ICC tournaments, Kohli has not won a single title. After losing in the final of the World Test Championship (WTC) at the hands of New Zealand on Friday, Kohli’s captaincy is now in question once again and also because this year India has to face another ICC event in the form of T20 World Cup. To play tournament.
Under Kohli’s predecessor Dhoni, India won three ICC titles in the 2007 T20 World Cup, the 2011 ODI World Cup and the 2013 Champions Trophy. After this Dhoni’s name became one of the rarest captains in the world. After winning the 2013 Champions Trophy, Dhoni captained three more ICC tournaments. These tournaments were 2014 T20 World Cup, 2015 ODI World Cup and 2016 T20 World Cup, but India could not win the title in all three. In this way, Dhoni could not win a single India in the last three ICC tournaments under his captaincy. After this, India has played three more ICC tournaments so far. In all three, Kohli was the captain of the Indian team.
In these, Kohli first got a chance to captain in an ICC tournament in the 2017 Champions Trophy. In this tournament held in England, Team India reached the final, but could not stop the arch-rivals Pakistan from winning the title. The second time in Kohli’s life to captain an ICC tournament came in the 2019 ODI World Cup. However, this time the journey of Team India came to a halt in the semi-finals, where New Zealand won by 18 runs under the captaincy of Kane Williamson. After this, now Kohli missed out on winning the ICC title once again in the form of the WTC final on Friday. This time too, Williamson’s Kiwis defeated Kohli’s stature as captain, beating him by eight wickets.
After the loss in the WTC final, the question has now arisen whether Kohli should be retained as captain in all three formats or should he be stripped of captaincy in one or two formats. In fact, after Kohli took over the captaincy completely, there were some occasions when Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane not only captained the Indian team but also registered victory in his absence. However, Rohit only captained in the limited overs formats, while Rahane led the team in all three formats. Although Rohit and Rahane got less captaincy opportunities, but under their captaincy, the team’s win percentage is very good.
Rahane in particular deserves mention because India won the last Test series on Australia tour 2-1 under Rahane’s captaincy when Kohli returned home leaving the team 0-1 in the series. Apart from this, the demand for handing over the captaincy to Rohit in limited overs has often been raised. In this too, Rohit’s upper hand in the T20 format is also visible because under his captaincy, Mumbai Indians have won the IPL title five times, while Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) did not get the title even once under the captaincy of Kohli. . However, both Rohit and Kohli have been captaining in the IPL since 2013.
India’s title win in ICC tournament-
year, tournament, captain
1983, ODI World Cup, Kapil Dev
2002, Champions Trophy, Sourav Ganguly
2007, T20 World Cup, Mahendra Singh Dhoni
2011, One Day World Cup, Mahendra Singh Dhoni
2013, Champions Trophy, Mahendra Singh Dhoni
India in the ICC tournament under the captaincy of Kohli-
2017, Champions Trophy, defeat in the final
2019, ODI World Cup, semifinal loss
2021, WTC, loss in the final