Virat Kohli’s announcement that he will relinquish the Indian T20I captaincy after the ongoing ICC T20I World Cup was made roughly a month before the tournament began. And that surprised a lot of people who are part of the cricketing fraternity and many outside it as well.
Former cricketers like Maninder Singh and Monty Panesar feel that the decision by the Indian skipper, that too ahead of a big tournament, didn’t send a positive message and possibly affected Team India’s performance in the mega tournament.
“I don’t want to blame Virat here. There are some players who were thinking that they want to replace Virat as the next captain. They want to be the next India captain. Virat made a big mistake announcing the decision ahead of the tournament that he will be giving up his T20I captaincy after the World Cup. He should have played the tournament and then at the end of the tournament, whatever India’s result was, announced that – I am quitting T20I captaincy. Things would have been different today if Virat had done this,” Panesar told TimesofIndia.com in an exclusive interview.
“By announcing this beforehand, (the likes of) Rohit, Rishabh, and KL must be thinking of themselves as the next T20I captain. There won’t be any focus on the game then. Rather than focusing on the game, they must be thinking about the captaincy. So, Virat shouldn’t have announced this because there are too many leaders in this team. He should have kept his cool, played the tournament, and then said ‘I am going to hang up my T20I captaincy boots now’,” Panesar, who played 50 Tests, 26 ODIs, and 1 T20I for England, opined.
India had kicked off their T20 World Cup campaign on a well below par note, losing to Pakistan by 10 wickets. The Men in Blue suffered another blow when they were handed an eight-wicket defeat by New Zealand in their second match. With two defeats against two other higher ranked teams in their group Team India found themselves in a precarious situation, with only math keeping their semi-final hopes alive.
Former India cricketer Maninder Singh heaped praise on Virat’s achievements but criticised his decision of announcing his decision to quit as T20I captain ahead of a tournament like the World Cup.
“The disappointment will always be there with Virat. He is such a player who always performed and won matches for India and always finished on a high. But before the T20 World Cup, a captain comes and says this is going to be my last tournament as T20I captain. Okay, we accept that. And our coach also comes, whether he has been told or he doesn’t want to continue and speaks about his last assignment. This doesn’t give a positive message. Now, what is happening? A lot of things created confusion basically and this will always have an effect on the performance. And it has happened,” Maninder signed off.
