Virat Kohli was supposed to be the replacement of Sachin Tendulkar, but for the last two years, he has been on a disastrous streak; comparable only to that of volatile Vinod Kambli. Now, one of the greats of modern times is facing a threat of fading into oblivion.
Kohli resigns from Test captaincy
The year 2022 did not start on a good note for Virat Kohli. Under his captaincy, the Indian Team lost a test series to Proteas. Just after the series, the wonder boy resigned from his captaincy. The ditching of responsibility has left many people bewildered. The man was poised to be one of the best servants of Indian cricket. Suddenly, what happened to him?
Timeline of India’s Cricketing Prince Charming
Kohli first burst onto the scene after captaining India to victory in the 2008 U-19 cricket world cup. Even when more talented players like Rohit Sharma were dominating domestic cricket, Kohli’s emergence as a leader drew significant media attention. The promotion of young players after the advent of T20 cricket reverberated it more.
In August 2008, Kohli made his international debut in an ODI against Sri Lanka. Typical of a young player, Kohli had a slight struggle in his initial days. However, he later improved and was selected for the Champions trophy in 2009.
His promising talent prompted Royal Challengers Bangalore to continue investing in his potential. He paid them back with some stupendous performances in the champions league, world cup of franchise cricket. Later, Kohli’s stable world cup performances, along with his technically sound T20 exploits, became a reason for selectors choosing him for his Test Debut in 2011.
Test debut and Captaincy
Kohli initially did not perform well in Tests. Within 7-months Kohli returned the favours with his century against a strong Australian bowling lineup in Adelaide. The next 7 years of Kohli were just an extension of his strong 2011-12. Kohli soon became the century man of Cricket. The amount of batting record he broke is uncountable.
Kohli was handed Test captaincy midway through India’s Australia tour in 2014-15. He emerged as an aggressive captain against a strong Australian side possessing greats like Mitchell Johnson, Ryan Harris and Michael Clarke. Later Kohli’s aggressive captaincy bore fruits in differing conditions as is evident from his records of 40 wins in 68 Test matches.
Kohli’s glamour inclinations
While Kohli was climbing the cricketing ladders, a parallel force inside his psyche was preparing for disaster. Kohli’s visible inclination towards stardom was becoming a cause of concern for many. However, Kohli’s rising status on the back of his cricketing performances silenced the concerns. Not for long though…
Increasing stature made Kohli a favourite of Glamour world. Slowly, he became one of the favourites of Page-3 newspapers. His flying kisses to girlfriend Anushka Sharma drew more and more advertisements towards him. He became a favourite of brands looking for a face to promote their products with a tagline.
Kohli was everywhere; cricket field, press conferences, and advertisements. It started to show up in his attitudes as well. In his head, Kohli became answerable to none. He would escape criticism by counter questioning critics. Similarly, many videos on the Internet can be found where Kohli is seen fighting with his fans.
Read more: Virat Kohli vs. Sunil Chhetri: One invites criticism and the other is closed to it.
Woke tilt and indiscipline in the team
Virat slowly started to lecture Indians on moral and ethical codes of conduct. Soon, he took up unnecessary activism. He started to peddle illogical and historically inaccurate advices on Hindu festivals. His one-sided wokeism reached its zenith when in 2021; he announced that he will teach 1.4 billion Indians the methods of celebrating Diwali.
Read more: The power of Hindu Money: FabIndia and Virat Kohli withdraw their anti-Hindu ads
Kohli’s liberal bent of mind made sure that there is little to no discipline in the Indian team. Under Kohli and Ravi Shastri, sexual misadventure became an achievement to be proud of in the dressing room. The team started to break into factions and Kohli’s individual as well as team’s performances nosedived. Virat’s frustration on broadcasters in his last test match as captain was the epitome of his frustrations.
Read more: Only controversies can keep Virat Kohli alive and kicking. At least Virat Kohli thinks so!
Kohli was and will always be one of the greatest batsmen to wear Indian jerseys. However, talent will often get you to a certain limit, after that, it’s all about how you carry it. One thing is for sure, Kohli could not shoulder the legacy of great Sachin Tendulkar with grace.
Now Kohli can concentrate on his extraordinary batting talent. Definitely, it’s a total pressure any captain undergoes. Now it is only playing a pivot role as batter. I definitely, wish him a great luck in his future career.
Wow no sense does the editor has a guy who is carrying not only India’s test cricket but world test cricket is been compared to a average player like kambli. Every indian player will always be in controversy if he had a very average career with not much performance this was a perfect article. He has 70 centuries.!!! Level up editor give him some respect instead of being a paid editor for someone
Well you must be living under rock. Virat Kohli WAS good player once up on a time but ever since he got married, he hardly have shown any interest on the game and rather hyper active WOKE activist on social media giving Gyan to public on how to celebrate centuries old festivals and acting on Advertisements promoting commercial products, bending knee for 20 thousands miles away far land causes where 99 percent of the public doesn’t even know how Cricket is played and the list of his self promotions and money making deals goes on. Once a person ignores the core work he/she supposed to concentrate and occupies themselves on everything else, then it’s right decision to demote.
We would rather give chance to others who are eager play rather self promotion.
At least brush up Ur English. Ur views are not clear.
Take nothing away from Kohli, but Kambli wasn’t ordinary.
What the Editor is rightly portraying is their uncalled arrogance
@Kuday.,
Have you ever been to 22 yards alone..
You won’t understand and don’t have any idea about a person who have scored 70 centuries odd in an international career and still going strong, Well at least stronger than you..
Ask your buddy rohit sharma who still has may be around 30 centuries in international circuit and is hailed to be a better cricketer than the great virat kohli..
Thank you..
Please respect indians because I don’t think any indians have scored more centuries than virat kohli other than sachin tendulkar..
@Suman Chatterjee, you sounds like a fan boy of Virat and while I don’t have any problem you supporting your Idle, just because Virat had made 70 centuries doesn’t gets him right to be WOKE and advise to people on how to celebrate their centuries old traditions and start teaching people how to be environment sensitive while Virat and his filmy wife owns 10 thousand square foot air conditioned house run on AC year long and own multiple gas guzzling cars, use private Jets for their personal vacations. Just three hours of fuel consumed by those Jets are equal to whole year of normal people’s carbon emission. Per your logic since none of us ever been a chief minister, prime minister or not even a local political leaders we can’t comment on CM, PM or any political leaders? In the same logic then we don’t have right to elect them either because we don’t know what involves in the life of those leaders?
Once any person’s profession is involved with public, well public have right to comment what they want especially people related to sports, politics, entertainment et cetera. India is a democratic country and we have right to speech and right to expression and you can’t stop or deny my rights.
Give respect to Virat. No mud slinging. He is a great batsman and was a good captain. He is doing what Dhoni did. Giving away captaincy to young ones and support the new captain like Dhoni did.
You just can’t demand respect, it should be earned and we are also saying the same what others who said here in the comments, Virat WAS used to be a great player once up on a time and ever since he lost that interest, it’s time to let him pass on the captaincy to others who still have interest in the sport and not bend the knees for some others while never bother to bend the knee for their fellow citizens.
We had supported and had respect for him but he lost our respect once he lost the core interest on the game.
The author is going over the top.”Kohli’s liberal bent of mind made sure that there is little to no discipline in the Indian team. Under Kohli and Ravi Shastri, sexual misadventure became an achievement to be proud of in the dressing room.”
From where exactly did you find this out? Hardik Pandya? Well, post match IPL parties are to be blamed for this and it’s up to an individual and the club to pull reins. What has this got to do with Kohli? Ask anyone in cricket, views from players from any country who know Kohli, he is a very disciplined player, be it fitness, exercises, practices and makes sure it is followed by everyone in team. He’s turned vegan to add to his fitness.
Wokeness, yes, surely he could have avoided taking a knee or even have taken a step to show solidarity with atrocities committed on Bangladeshi Hindus. Also those messages for crackers etc he could have avoided. Maybe he has a bad PR agency which could be infested with left leaning people. Twitter accounts and tweets are not the right way to judge him. His record speaks for himself. He is not admired in the world just for nothing. We can surely forgive him for these small things.
Entire middle order of Team India is out of form. They are relying too much on bowlers to deliver. Without runs on board, pressure is halved for the opposition to take risks. And how many times can bowler give life time best performances. Hopefully Kohli and others will quickly regain form, new replacements will work. Hope for best.
To compare Kohli and Kambli is so much out of place. It’s like comparing I. M. Rand. Khan to Modi. Don’t just write articles for the sake of it. This article is pretty much low quality journalism and one wonders if there is any editor to review before publishing. No one will take you guys seriously if you write these kind of articles.