On 15th January, 2022, just one day after the Indian team stumbled to a 2-1 Test series defeat against South Africa, Virat Kohli announced that he was stepping down as India's Test captain. He made this move just a few months after he had relinquished India's T20I captaincy and was later removed as the ODI captain. Thus, his seven-year reign as India's Test skipper, during which the team secured victory in 40 of the 68 Tests it contested, concluded.
After four years of relinquishing the Test captaincy, Kohli disclosed on Wednesday why he took that path. Although the team achieved great feats under his watch, the burdens of leadership began to weigh heavily on him. His individual performance lagged, and the Indian team failed to win the Test series in South Africa, prompting him to step aside.
“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 realize how much of a load both those things will present in my daily life, to be honest. But because I was so driven to make sure Indian cricket stayed on top, I didn’t really pay it much attention. 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,” Virat Kohli was heard as saying at the RCB Innovation lab.
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Kohli's memorable run
He first took over as India's Test captain in the 2014 Adelaide Test against Australia, after MS Dhoni departed due to a thumb injury. The visitors poised themselves to topple Australia, where Kohli spearheaded the batting charge by hammering two hundreds, but then they collapsed. In August 2014, it marked Kohli's first official series as skipper, and he led the team to a historic Test series win against Sri Lanka for the first time since 1993. After that, the Kohli-Ravi Shastri era kicked off. The Men in Blue clinched the Test mace for five consecutive years and accomplished another milestone after they toppled Australia in their backyard and seized the 2018-19 Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
But during his tenure as Test captain, Kohli said he felt lost. Overwhelmed by the pressure of captaincy, he struggled to carve out time for himself, and that convinced him that resigning was the right choice.
“The reason you’re entrusted with a leadership role is that people believe you can bear more and still command it. In many ways, leadership revolves more around management than even coaching. It’s about reading the people playing with you and for you, and discovering how to spark their best. To do that, you must remain in a space where you’re not fixated on yourself. You never even entertain the thought of someone asking you, ‘Are you okay?’ That question never crosses your mind,” he said.
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“But towards the end of my captaincy tenure, I did look back and realize that no one had really asked me that question for almost nine years – ‘How are you doing?" he concluded.