Like Sachin Tendulkar, relieving of captaincy could unburden Virat Kohli the batsman

Captaincy never seemed to shrink Virat Kohli, rather he had grown with it. Through largely good times, and the intermittent bad, leading a team never seemed to burden him. Shades of silver did intrude into his once jet-black tidily-trimmed beard. But captaincy, if his on-field passion was a reflection, if the chosen words in press conferences were to hold a mirror, dwelled comfortably on him.

For him it seemed an instinct than duty, predestined the moment he broke into the first-class cricket—and he could show a proud record to the team of doubters, even if ICC silverwares eluded him, the caveat that arguably ended in Rohit Sharma displacing him as the white-ball captain.

But it was inevitable that while being a leader, lead batsman, talisman and an ambassador of the game, something had to give, one day. It was white-ball captaincy in the end, and though he would miss it undoubtedly, it might be the small price he might have to pay for reviving his anomalous batting form. To restore the gold standards he had set for himself, he had to sacrifice something or the other, and forsaking T20 captaincy was the first step towards the pursuit of batting absolution. And now comes his removal as ODI-captain.

In that sense, the relieving of captaincy duties could unburden him, and liberate the batting colossus in him. It’s what his team wants. It’s not that captaincy might have impacted his batting. In the early to middle stages of his tenure, the extra responsibility has only uplifted his batting. But it has reached a stage where the team needs Kohli the batsman rather than Kohli the captain.

For, Kohli the batsman was an irresistible force, and he is no longer invulnerable. The century-guzzling virtuoso has gone century-less for two and a half years, for 57 innings. From the start of 2020, he has averaged 26.04 in Tests—a ghastly number for someone of his calibre, and it has stretched beyond a phase of aberration and bloated into a genuine worry. Though his corresponding numbers in ODI and T20Is inhabited the upper reaches of 40 (46 in ODIs and 49 in T20). So, in essence, captaincy had little adverse bearing on his form in white-ball cricket. So, his removal should be seen as the quest to rediscover a batting phenomenon rather than firing a struggling captain. It could, in turn, channelise his collective energy into Test cricket.