The Deal With Kohli

Virat Kohli Thrives On Conflict. Offer Him A Fight And He Will Raise His Game. Can India’s Best Batsman Of His Generation Shrug Off Recent Controversies To Rediscover His Batting Form In SA?

- Partha.Bhaduri

We will deal with it. Leave it to BCCI.” Board president Sourav Ganguly’s words have a certain chilling undertone which would not have been lost on Virat Kohli. But the cricketer must now dismiss notions of consequences and reprisals and get his ‘A’ game ready for the first South Africa Test in Centurion on Sunday.

Team India, in dire need of runs, will be hoping the task isn’t as onerous as it seems. Kohli is now ‘merely’ Test skipper instead of the talismanic leader and multi-format energiser bunny who lights up your TV screens whenever India are in play. He is also without any serious Test runs for two years.

The fourth-most successful Test captain in history finds his leadership status undermined by the happenings of the last few weeks. The team itself is in a strategic transition as one head coach takes over from another. For Kohli, now 33, this is just the sort of late-career crisis every Indian captain hopes to avoid but inevitably stumbles into.

The two most overtly combative captains in Indian cricket history going toe-to-toe on anything doesn’t make for good news. When the issue concerns the best Indian batsman of this generation, who may still have a few good years left in him, it is doubly alarming.