ODI pressure on Kohli still on

Virat Kohli

If Virat Kohli chose to quit only as T20 captain after next month's World Cup in the UAE and Oman, he will be under pressure to stay away from the ODI captaincy as well, a BCCI official told mid-day on Sunday. Doubtless, the BCCI expected him to quit as ODI captain as well. The writing was on the wall, it is learnt, as soon as a few players informed the BCCI that things were not rosy on the Kohli-led ship.

However much some sections of the establishment would want him to give up the ODI captaincy and make their point about not wanting separate captains for T20 and ODI cricket (which is only fair), it must be said that Kohli has been a successful ODI captain and the semi-final exit from the 2019 World Cup did not amount to disaster.

That Kohli will no longer be ODI captain is imminent, said another official. There is a section in the BCCI that feel Kohli was given too much of a free hand by the Vinod Rai-led Committee of Administrators.

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The BCCI was alarmed when some officials heard that several players were not able to give their best because of Kohli's way of handling affairs. A big sore point may have been caused when the captain felt the players lacked intensity while analysing the World Test Championship final loss to New Zealand.

A BCCI official revealed that apart from the Board doing their bit to find out whether the players were indeed unhappy, they also got to know how the team atmosphere improved when Kohli departed for paternity leave after India lost the opening Test against Australia in Adelaide last January. India under Ajinkya Rahane ended up winning the 2020-21 Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2-1. It must be said it was under Kohli's leadership that India achieved their first-ever Test series win on Australian soil in 2018-19.

It took the Board four months to get a good idea of what was going wrong and it was more or less decided to replace him as limited overs cricket captain after the T20 World Cup. That was before Kohli himself made that famous announcement last week.

A source reckons that Kohli got the message that the BCCI were not happy with his captaincy and he responded by quitting the T20 captaincy. More interesting days ahead for sure!

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