There Is A Lot More To Rohit's Leadership Than Meets The Eye

India captain has shown emotional intelligence to create a relaxed environment

- Somshuvra Laha

In this smooth ride of World Cup ascendancy, where India look poised to humble everyone, time is ripe for all types of conjectures to tiptoe into conversations. Pacers have not allowed Hardik Pandya's absence to be felt, so this must be a sign. Virat Kohli's stars have finally aligned with a World Cup, so it can't go wrong. Rohit Sharma has won five IPL titles more than MS Dhoni, for the record-which means thus must lead to something. All are fair, but nothing has happened overnight.

Not until July 31 did India know if Jasprit Bumrah was ready to bowl again. Till last September, Kohli hadn't hit a hundred in nearly three years. Sharma was the captain then as he is now with an unprecedented eight wins in a row. And lest we forget, Sharma was also in charge of the Mumbai Indians side that had lost eight games in a row in 2022.

What we are witnessing right now is a rambunctious convergence of India's greatest skills, with the rub of the green going their way too. Luck is of paramount importance, as Richie Benaud had famously said: "Captaincy is 90% luck and 10% skill." Benaud had also added a rider to it: "But don't try it without that 10%."

If captaincy is a skill, cricket hasn't yet found a way to quantify it. Test win percentages and World Cup wins are numerical conclusions that shed no light on what exactly makes a cricketer primarily skilled in batting or bowling a great leader too. Conviction, confidence, personality and presence of mind have often been touted as important behavourial qualities but those again get projected in different ways.