The turn of the century and India’s first overseas coach since, interestingly enough, four important captain-coach combos – Sourav Ganguly and John Wright (November 2000 to April 2005), Rahul Dravid and Greg Chappell (October 2005 to March 2007) are. ), Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Gary Kirsten (March 2008 to April 2011) and Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri (July 2017 to November 2021). There was also a Dhoni-Duncan Fletcher alliance (June 2011 to March 2015), but it was devoid of enthusiasm outside the 2013 Champions Trophy, which was India’s last meaningful trip to the world stage.
Each of the others had its moments. Under Ganguly and Wright, India began to believe they could compete with the best in the business on equal terms, a belief strengthened by a surprise win against Australia in 2001. The Dravidian-chapel era is overseen. The elimination of the first round before the 2007 World Cup, but it was not all gloom and doom – the first Test series win in the Caribbean in 35 years, the first Test win in South Africa, the first step towards playing five specialist bowlers in a five-day game, An encouraging run of 16 consecutive successful chases in 50 overs cricket.
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Dhoni and Kirsten were the most successful pair in terms of results. India won New Zealand for the first time in 41 years (2009), climbed to the top of the Test podium in the same December and spent their time at the top of the lead with success at the 2011 World Cup at home.
However, Kohli and Shastri together rewrote the DNA of Indian cricket. A match made in heaven, an unusual case of identical poles attracted to each other, the charismatic captain and the one-time pin-up boy combined to make the Test team the most vibrant and productive of all Indian Test outfits. He oversaw a period of extraordinary gains in the longest format, with consecutive series wins in the pice de résistance Australia, although in his time, India rarely threatened global silverware, a glaring shortcoming that was not overcome. can go.
By all accounts, Kohli was the boss and Shastri was a willing, able ally who attempted to save the captain from public outcry, which was not insignificant. Their association was spread over two phases – between August 2014 and April 2016 when Shastri was the team’s director, and then it was the beginning of the latest four-and-a-half years, after which Kohli became captain across all formats.
History looks at the contribution of this couplet with love, though it would also be difficult to ignore the unusually hesitant decision that prevented India from maximizing its potential in both the 50- and 20-over World Cups. We’ll come to that later.
This pair was at its peak in Test cricket itself. Even though Fletcher was the coach during Kohli’s first Test as captain – though in a stand-in capacity at Adelaide in 2014 when Dhoni was unavailable – it was clear that Shastri was calling the off-field shots. In their collective wisdom, the team’s star batsman and one-time Champion of Champions decided that leg-spinner Karn Sharma’s form in the nets was so good that he could not be denied the big stage. As a result, proven match winner R Ashwin was benched with disastrous results. Ashwin’s off-spinning Australian counterpart Nathan Lyon took 12 wickets, while Karn’s only Test was a relentless failure.
It was during that Test itself that the roadmap for India’s Test future began to weaken. Aiming 364, India kept going with hammer and tongs, refusing to pull down the shutter even after writing on the wall. Kohli’s double century failed to stop his side from going down to 48, their daring chase ending at 315. The law was laid down – if the pursuit of victory resulted in defeat, that was acceptable. What was not, was adopting a safety-first strategy; Going to win went out the window after first ensuring that there was no chance of defeat. It was a culture that the captain and director (later to become head coach) infused on the team. Such was the strength of his personality that, when Kohli became full-time Test captain on the same Australian tour after Dhoni’s surprise retirement, the rest of the team had no choice but to fall in line.
Kohli’s inclination towards Test cricket meant that the world leader became the right ambassador for the under-threat long form in every sense of the word. India used their position in world cricket to embody the virtues of Test cricket and spoke with tremendous performances at home and away. One of the great contributions of the Kohli-Shastri duo was clearing misconceptions about the toss and the venue they were playing. India began to take the uncontrollable out of the equation – they didn’t care whether their captain won the toss or not (well he didn’t, as Kohli lost more than he won), nor did he Now the care was whether they were Delhi or Durban, Manchester or Mumbai. Each game was studied to be adopted as a home Test. India began to enjoy challenges, especially abroad, in a marked change from the past, when they traveled with sheep-slaughter attitudes and as a result always came second.
While the initial period of this strong-willed alliance was marked by more blows than results, the tide began to turn on the tour of Australia in 2018-19. After unsuccessful outings in South Africa and England, India came up with a flurry of punches against a weak Australia. With Cheteshwar Pujara in the batting form and Jasprit Bumrah as the Rams, India made the most of absences to win 2-1 through suspensions from David Warner and Steve Smith. It was India’s first Test series win in Australia and took 71 years to come. In the end, the bombing matched the outcome; Kohli and Shastri had a base to build on and they did such a great job. A second series win in Australia came two years later (though Ajinkya Rahane was the one who masterminded Kohli after he returned home on paternity leave) and India were up 2–1 in England, thus the summer when the final Test was abandoned. and was later rescheduled for next July.
It was surprising for India to get so much success in the field of Tests. After all, there were massive discrepancies in selection – Kohli did not repeat the Test XI for 39 consecutive matches – and a distinct disregard for established names, not least Pujara and Ashwin. The former was publicly reprimanded more than once for his lack of ‘intent’, a euphemism for his strike-rate which did not conform to the template Kohli came up with. The latter, who was clearly India’s biggest match-winner in the last decade, came to be regarded as a somewhat ‘domestic’ bowler. Till this year’s tour of England, despite India’s five bowlers playing, they were deemed superfluous to the overall scheme of things, with Ravindra Jadeja winning as the lone spinner on the back of his undeniable all-round prowess.
The first move towards five bowlers taken during the Dravid-Chapel phase became a much preferred method under Kohli and Shastri. Inspired by the belief that 20 wickets were more likely to be taken by five bowlers than by four, the pair set out to light a batsman. The success of that formula can hardly be disputed, although it helped greatly that India had the resources of the pace on which to return.
It didn’t take long for Kohli and Shastri to conclude that the only way India would be able to be competitive in all conditions is if they used pace as their key weapon. As bowling coach B Arun, he had the ideal Dronacharya to mentor Arjun’s plethora. India’s speed arsenal is now more plentiful and powerful than ever. That, as much as the results in the field of Tests, will remain an enduring legacy of the Kohli-Shastri duo.
He had no less success in white-ball cricket, but it was confined to bilateral series at home and away. In ICC tournaments, India failed to make a single final under the Kohli-Shastri regime, which includes the 2015 World Cup, 2016 T20 World Cup, 2019 World Cup (all semi-finals) and the current T20 World Cup. In the form of lack of success, lack of foresight and planning when it comes to key positions also comes to the fore. In the 50-over World Cup in England, that centered around the No. 4 position. The current Ambati Rayudu was unfairly dropped after three failures at home against Australia a few months before the Big Bash. To be fair, that slot was not examined until the semi-final against New Zealand, when suddenly Dinesh Karthik went two-down and was speculated to be unwilling to play the role on him without warning.
Read also | A timeline of the Kohli-Shastri era: dominance in bilateral tours, but difficult in ICC events
There was a similar turmoil in Hardik Pandya’s T20 World Cup. Despite doubts over his ability to play with the ball, his insistence on including him at the cost of the balance of the team was shocking. However, his batting has also fallen in difficult times, making it even more difficult for Pandya to understand the push.
Monday’s dead rubber against Namibia was Kohli’s 50th as T20I captain and 150th for Kohli and Shastri together. The nine-wicket win was the perfect gift for both; He raised the prestige of Indian cricket and did so in his style, staying true to his beliefs and rejecting any resistance as unwarranted, baseless interference. There was a swagger in his reign on the border of the arrogant, but he was allowed to do his bidding, he delivered more and more often. There’s not the slightest doubt about it.
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