Needless to say, Indian cricket team’s current run is no less than a fairytale. Virat Kohli is like the philosopher’s stone, which when touches anything, changes it into gold. India’s success rate in Tests under Kohli’s captaincy has so far been phenomenal and when, on a chilly winter night, MS Dhoni announced that he has decided to step down from the duties, every cricket follower in unison took one name to replace him — Virat Kohli. Test captaincy has already taken the toll on him, gifting him a salt and pepper beard at the age of 28. But the best part is, his performance has been unchanged before and after the command. Rather, looking at the records, one can say it has bettered.
We, the ones who write about cricket to earn our bread, religiously go through the data and numbers of every individual. The ratio of how much we study this cricketer and the rest of the world is almost the same, for this guy has hardly has a slump in his career. Like any other job, we also have to do our preparations before any big day, especially before match day. Analysing how players are performing, who might be picked in the eleven and keeping mini write-ups ready for the inevitable are routine work. Let me take you through what happens in CricketCountry room before an India match day.
Full cricket scorecard: India vs England, 2nd ODI
Senior reporters settle down and assign the mandatory articles, like the likely elevens of each team, key battles and the previews of the match to all the writers. Records are checked and for any suspected record, a piece is kept ready. Before the Cuttack fixture, the routine work was going on when our Editor Abhishek Mukherjee surprised all.
“Do one thing, keep a report ready with the basic frame of Kohli scoring a hundred and winning India the match. This will take down the workload off your shoulder.”
This was supposed to be a joke and everyone, though bursting into laughter, knew in the back of their minds that he was not wrong in saying this. The phrase, “we are at loss of adjectives” has become a cliché per se after the way the storm named Virat Kohli is whirling its way to the next record. Over time, he has turned himself into a polished Kohinoor from just a mere piece of diamond found in the mine, like the others.
You name a discipline of cricket and Kohli will show you how to excel in it. Catching up with the changing wind in Indian team of turning fit, fitter, fittest; once a chubby young man Kohli is undoubtedly the fittest in the arena of global cricket. Stories of him giving up his favourite butter chicken have turned into folklore as much as his famous flying run outs have. Talking about his batting is superfluous, for he is redefining consistency with every single innings (that sentence too sounds like a cliché). India had to depend upon him for bowling too and he did not disappoint his team under pressure, getting a wicket with his first ball in ICC World T20. Just to mention, he was also seen keeping the stumps to give MS Dhoni a breather.
But this article is not about how Kohli is performing. This is about what this will do to Indian cricket. Looking at India’s recent performances, especially in limited-overs format, one can safely say it has become a custom for Kohli to save India from danger and hand them a victory. What good it is doing to Indian cricket is out in the open, what is not is what harm it will cause to the ‘team game’. Knowingly or unknowingly, apart from inspiring the team to match up to his level, he is making everyone dependent upon him and the first ODI against England is nothing but a proof of that. Here are some numbers which might interest cricket lovers. This is a study of Kohli’s and India’s performance in limited-overs since ICC World T20 2016:
While improvement in cricket means the overall growth of a team, India’s overdependence on Kohli may land the team in trouble. Question remains for the period of unavailability of the performer. While Kohli has been achieving new milestones with every dawn, the team is yet to find any other player at par in terms of consistency and improvement with him.
Bigger concern will be India’s performance in away matches. Though Kohli is a giant considering his records in Australia, the real test lies in England— a test of his improvement as a cricketer as well as a mentally strong character who can shrug off past failures and instil self-belief to overcome nervousness. While India have been overtly dependent upon Kohli, question remains, what if he fails overseas? Will a Kedar Jadhav be able to stand up on his own, without Kohli paving the way for his century as a strong partner at the other end?
One can still hope for a positive outcome of this destructive form of his. Can his form inspire the rest of the team of all the possibilities? Can his mates take a note of how Kohli not only idolised one of the greatest of all time but also prepared himself such that he can be compared with him? Will he become the technology that makes the team lazy or the tool to help the team explore new horizons in terms of becoming the numero uno in the game?
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