A decade from now, how will Kohli’s captaincy be remembered?

Kohli is India’s most successful captain till date, winning 37 out of 64 Tests he has led. Of those 37, five have come in Australia, England and South Africa, four in the Caribbean, five in Sri Lanka and 23 at home.

Where does Virat Kohli stand in India's pantheon of captains? This is not just a statistical question--since the turn of the century India has been blessed with some of the most influential figures in the world of cricket as captains--Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, MS Dhoni and now Virat Kohli. Each of them has taken the team forward in their own way, with more Tests and series won in England, Australia, Pakistan and New Zealand. With time, their influence meant that they had a more powerful say in team selection as well as longer runs at the helm.

India captain Virat Kohli (AP)

Dhoni and Kohli in particular have had charmed runs, with an unquestioning team management and the support of the cricket board (former board chief N Srinivasan had even once vetoed the selectors’ move to sack Dhoni).

In winning the World Cup, Dhoni scores above every other captain since Kapil Dev despite being pretty abysmal in Tests. But what legacy is Kohli creating? It’s time to pose that question because no one has led the team longer than Kohli. Let's break his innings so far down a little.

Kohli is India’s most successful captain till date, winning 37 out of 64 Tests he has led. Of those 37, five have come in Australia, England and South Africa, four in the Caribbean, five in Sri Lanka and 23 at home. The only significant series that Kohli won away from the subcontinent was in Australia (2018-19) when the hosts were without David Warner and Steve Smith but India nevertheless had to deal with high quality pace bowling from Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc. As captain, Kohli averages a stunning 56.29 with 7671 runs and 27 hundreds but the last time he scored a century away from home was in 2018, a well-grafted first-innings 123 in India’s 146-run loss at Perth. Kohli has been predominantly a first-innings scorer as well, hitting just three second innings hundreds---141 in Adelaide (2014), 103* in Galle (2017) and 103 in Nottingham (2018).

Kohli’s shorter format aggregates are equally flattering---15,328 runs and counting with 43 hundreds and 90 fifties. He is no doubt the generational player everyone wants to watch in their lifetime. As captain though, he is yet to win an ICC tournament despite leading since the 2016 T20 World Cup at home. He has drawn a blank in the Indian Premier League as well, even though Rohit Sharma has already won it four times. A great batsman need not be a great captain. History has examples of how best-in-class batsmen often couldn’t cope with captaincy, Sachin Tendulkar being the most illustrious name among them. But with New Zealand captain Kane Williamson and England captain Joe Root (though he has often faced bitter criticism) going strong with the bat as well as in winning big tournaments, the spotlight on Kohli has grown harsher.

For almost four years, Kohli had the privilege of having Dhoni by his side in the shorter formats, setting fields from behind the stumps and suggesting bowling changes, allowing Kohli to concentrate on his batting. It also almost coincided with a stupendous Test run where India played and won almost every match. Between June 2015 (vs Bangladesh, Fatullah) and Dec 2017 (vs Sri Lanka, Delhi), India had played just one series outside the subcontinent, against a rather out-of-sorts West Indies side in 2016 that they won 2-0. It was essentially in South Africa (2018-19) that Kohli’s real test as captain began. Since then we have been witness to a strange graph of convincing wins followed by debilitating losses, a series of inexplicable selections and on-field decisions.

Kohli’s combativeness---often bordering on the abrasive--glosses over obvious flaws when India have won or are on top. But when the chips are down, the batting hasn’t fired and the bowling can’t live up to his impossible expectations, Kohli's captaincy begins to look out of sorts.

This series was a perfect example. Kohli unleashed his bowlers on England for the last two sessions at Lord’s but failed to rotate them well enough when England were batting their way to an imperious lead at Headingley. He can be inflexible at times, be it approaching the fuller ball with hard hands, or not picking Ravichandran Ashwin or continuing with Ishant Sharma in the Headingley defeat when he was clearly struggling with his run-up. He's also not fond of explaining why he is doing what he is doing. On being asked about putting a struggling Sharma back on to bowl, he said: “I am standing in the slips, so I have to watch the bat of the batter. So I am not analysing how he (Sharma) is moving on the field.”

That's a slightly absurd response from a captain and not just because the slips get into their final positions only when a fast bowler is at the end of his stride, leaving them plenty of time to get a 180-degree view of the ground if they want.

Not finding space for a cerebral bowler like Ashwin too seems ham-handed and formulaic, considering India had gone in with both Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja on a damp Southampton pitch for the World Test Championship final, with Kohli declaring this was an eleven that could play on any surface in any weather condition. How that worked against Ashwin in the space of one Test despite taking more wickets than Jadeja in Southampton, is anybody’s guess. Strange selections have been a hallmark of Kohli’s captaincy. Dropping Ajinkya Rahane for two successive Tests in South Africa (2018) to accommodate Rohit Sharma based on his form in India, pulling Parthiv Patel almost out of retirement to replace Wriddhiman Saha in the same series, dropping Cheteshwar Pujara for the first England Test in 2018--Kohli has been quite adept at taking “difficult decisions”, decisions which are difficult to comprehend.

Rahane first sowed the idea of an alternate and frankly, brilliant leader by giving India their most memorable Test series win, against a full-strength Australia in Australia, battling on with more than half the side injured and exuding a calm that belied India’s dressing room emergency. In contrast, Kohli’s gesticulation and over the top celebrations, which works well in certain situations, may not be what India needs when things begin to badly for the team.

Kohli will still be in charge for the long haul, not only because captaincy in India cannot be split but also because till 2019 (when Rohit established himself as Test opener) we didn’t have a player who plays all formats consistently. It’s still too early to say Kohli is in the worst slump of his career as a batsman. With two Tests remaining in the England series, followed by the IPL and the T20 World Cup, everything could once again swing in Kohli’s favour in the next three months, or pull him down even more. Which is to say, every match from now till the end of the year will be an important milestone in the legacy Kohli the captain will leave behind.