Rohit Sharma has taken over the mantle to lead Team India in ODI and T20I teams. This marks Virat Kohli’s close to five-year-tenure as the country’s limited-overs captain. Kohli took over as Test captain after MS Dhoni retired in late 2015 and then in ODIs and T20Is after the former skipper stepped down from the post in 2017.
Rohit Sharma, proved his captaincy qualities in the Indian Premier League (IPL) leading Mumbai Indians (MI) as well as the Indian team as skipper briefly, which earned him the coveted post, which is challenging and rewarding for a cricketer.
He has demonstrated, grit, leadership has all the character of a cricketer wanting to excel across all formats”, his fans and admirers say.
There are not many batsmen in the world, who make batting look as elegant as Rohit Sharma does. The Indian cricketer, who is currently leading Mumbai Indians (MI) in the ninth edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) has already led the side to two championship titles. Rohit is one of the key players in the Indian limited-overs set-up and enjoys an immense fan following. He is fondly called “Ro” and “Hit-ma
Kohli and Rohit Sharma evolution into two of the world’s all-format batters makes him happy and proud. Shastri first got involved with the Indian team back in 2014, when he joined it as director, before getting promoted to a full-time coach post the departure of Anil Kumble in 2017.
Why Rohit Sharma over Virat Kohli?
“The BCCI wanted absolute clarity between red-ball and white-ball cricket. The BCCI wanted a complete (leadership) separation between the longest format and shorter formats to avoid any confusion. In the end, it was left to the selectors to take a call. They decided to appoint Rohit as new ODI captain,” according to a BCCI insider
Unlike the T20I captaincy change, where the announcement came from Kohli, citing his underperformance as a batsman the ODI leadership transition is seen as a BCCI decision.
Giving up T20I captaincy three months ago, Kohli had voiced his desire to lead India in Tests and ODIs, going ahead. “Understanding workload is a very important thing and considering my immense workload over the last 8-9 years playing all 3 formats and captaining regularly for last 5-6 years, I feel I need to give myself space to be fully ready to lead the Indian team in Test and ODI cricket,” he wrote on Instagram on September 16.
Virat Kohli character as a prolific scorer was waning
The point was that Virat leadership was waning, and his performance too took toll over the last 5 years, and he coudn’t handle captaincy and lead from the front as a batsman anymore, also his existence as a batsman was threatening.
Virat, as per the report, is keen to improve his scores as a batsman, having not scored a single hundred in international cricket for over two years. His ICC rankings as a batsman have also took southward direction over this period. Kohli, knowing the sort of a person he is, has been keen to improve and captaincy, in a way, was weighing him down.
“Captaincy had been taking away a lot of his time and that is why he needed this break. It will allow him to focus on his batting which is most important to him right now,” TOI quoted a source as saying.
As far as Tests are concerned, there’s no doubting Kohli’s credentials. His passion for the purest format of the game is second to no one, while his record as a skipper is also unparalleled.
Virat Kohli will lead the Indian team only in Tests, with Rohit Sharma taking over captaincy in ODIs and T20IsThe BCCI announced the decision on Wednesday but didn’t issue a statement explaining the decisionAs per a report, Kohli himself was keen to relinquish ODI captaincy too in order to focus on his batting.
