January 15, 2022: One day after India lost the Test series 1-2 in South Africa, Virat Kohli announced that he was stepping down as India’s Test captain. The development came just months after he quit India’s T20I captaincy and was removed as ODI skipper. It marked the end of Kohli’s seven-year tenure as India’s Test captain, during which he led the team to 40 wins from 68 matches.
Today, more than four years since stepping down as India’s most successful Test captain, Kohli has spoken about his decision. While India achieved several notable successes under his leadership, the demands of captaincy began to take a toll. As his personal form dipped and India fell short of winning a Test series in South Africa, Kohli felt it was the right time to step aside from leadership.
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“I ended up being in a place where I became the focal point of our batting unit and the focal point of leadership. I didn’t realise how much of load both those things will present in my daily life, to be honest. But because I was so driven to just make sure that Indian cricket stays on top, I didn’t really pay attention to it. And that’s precisely why by the time I left captaincy, I was completely spent. There was nothing left in the tank. I was completely consumed by it. It was gruesome,” Kohli said during the RCB Innovation Lab on Tuesday.
Kohli’s memorable run
Kohli first captained India in Tests during the 2014 Adelaide match against Australia after MS Dhoni was ruled out with a thumb injury. India came close to beating Australia, with Kohli leading the charge with twin centuries, but a dramatic batting collapse stood in the way. In August the following year, Kohli, then 26, in his first official series as captain, guided India to a historic series win in Sri Lanka, the team’s first there since 1993. From there, the Kohli-Ravi Shastri partnership took off. India won the ICC Test mace for five consecutive years and reached another high when they beat Australia in Australia to win the 2018-19 Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
However, along the way, Kohli felt he had lost himself. With the demands of captaincy leaving little time for himself, stepping away from the role eventually felt like the right decision.
“The reason you’re given a leadership role is because people believe you can take on more and still manage it. In many ways, leadership is more about management than even coaching. It’s about understanding the people playing with you and for you, and figuring out how to get the best out of them. To do that, you constantly have to be in a space where you’re not focused on yourself. You don’t even think about whether someone is going to ask you, ‘Are you okay?’ That thought doesn’t even cross your mind,” added Kohli.
“But towards the end of my captaincy tenure, I did look back and realise that no one had really asked me that question for almost nine years – ‘How are you doing?’”
