South Africa vs India 2018: Virat Kohli's excessive aggression and the hope of winning overseas
Indian skipper Virat Kohli is a fine player across all formats of the game, especially in the white ball form but how good he is as a captain? To get to any conclusion we look at stats, 34 Test matches, 20 wins, 5 losses and 9 draws. A win percentage of 58.92 which is the highest of all the Indian captains who have led in more than one Test match.
One would argue that most of these Test matches have been played on home turf, but again you need to play well to win even in your own backyard and the Indian has been able to successfully do that.
What is more astonishing to note here is that Virat has played a different XI in all these 34 Test matches. He said in the post-match conference that the team do not pick their final XI based on results, but rather, look at conditions. Kohli's peculiar selection decisions might be a bit difficult to understand but it is seen that it makes the players insecure about their respective position in the last XI.
The players play their best cricket when they know that their place in the final XI is not in danger, but due to this continuous chopping and changing, that hasn't been the case.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar was also prey such decision making in the second Test despite being India's best bowler in the opener. Kohli said that the same people who wanted Ajinkya Rahane out now want him in the playing XI. The Indian skipper must be joking with this one, surely.
Virat Kohli is like an open book. You can read him just by looking at him. It is great that he is passionate about his game, always wants to win, gives his 120% no matter what and he expects the same from his boys but sometimes he tends to overdo it.
A captain is expected to lead from the front and not show his excitement or disappointment with every single ball. The coolness is a trait that he could not inherit from his predecessor Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
It won't be fair to compare the different style of leading the team and every individual has his own way of getting the things done. We all know that it brings out the best in Virat Kohli when he takes the bull by its horns.
But where lies the problem is that every eleven players have their own approach. India's premier spinner Ravichandran Ashwin said last year that sometimes Virat is so aggressive that he felt scared.
Now Ashwin is no new boy in the dressing room. Parthiv Patel let go of a catch in the second innings that he should have gone for and his first reaction was that he raised his hand towards Pujara, directly blaming him while looking at Virat Kohli.
The reaction was obvious, Parthiv Patel was scared and Virat Kohli's assault would have been audible to both the wicket-keeper and the first slip. Do such instances send the right signal? You can't expect your players to perform if you will put them under pressure with your own excessive aggression. It is like telling a singer to sing calmly while putting a gun on to his head.
Kohli needs to understand that not all ten players can bring the same intent to the table as he does. Any sport is best played when you are enjoying every second of it and not by feeling scared, be it winning or losing, obviously when you lose you will be more disappointed, but there is no life without failures and indeed it is a tough pill to swallow. Most importantly you need to make sure that you learn from them.
India's performance in South Africa so far
There are many questions that need to be answered by the Indian camp. Why does the BCCI continue to be poor with their scheduling? Why did the mainstream players need to play against Sri Lanka? Couldn't they have been sent to South Africa to get acclimatized to the conditions? Couldn't a barrage of India A team take on the Lankans? When will we learn to hold on to our catches especially in the slips which may have made the series changing impact? The bowlers were good but why did they let the Proteas off the hook in the first innings of the series?
Why does Mohammed Shami bowl moody spells? Why the Test deputy who averages 53 in the overseas conditions was dropped just because of the current form? Where is the backing of players in this? Why don't we look at other resorts when Wriddhiman Saha is injured other than Parthiv Patel or Dinesh Karthik? Why did the batsmen fail to deliver the goods other than Kohli and Pandya?
There are a lot of question marks hanging over the Indian dressing room and the players, support staff, coach and Kohli need to make sure that they answer them - not to the press but to themselves.
It is time that we do better in overseas conditions rather than only hope that we can do well. A lot was expected from this team when they landed in the Rainbow Nation just because of the quality of cricket they were playing.
Yes, they had shown their domination in home conditions but then even those wins were against the top sides. We need to look at the bigger picture in how to prepare for the foreign challenges.
Questioning how other teams performed when they toured India is not the answer. It is like saying "we will take revenge when you will tour our country," and that's not the answer if you are looking for world domination.
Respect to the opposition is also crucial.
South Africa was the better side and they played better collectively in their known conditions, it was the only thing that was impressive in Kohli's press conference. Two bad games don't make this fine team, which has played some superb cricket, bad in any way but there is a lot of work to be done to find success in the overseas conditions.
It can't be said that India were outplayed as they were in with the chance in both the matches for most of the time, only when they turned out to bat in the fourth innings, things changed drastically and this can be taken as somewhat of a positive.