Back in September 1986 when Australia began its first tour to India in seven years, there was much drama. The Indian selectors, led by Chandu Borde, decided to ‘rest’ Sunil Gavaskar for the first two ODIs against Australia. It was the first time Australia played ODI cricket in India.
The selectors had one eye on the future and one eye on picking a backup opener for the 1987 World Cup. But this move was misconstrued and there was much drama. Borde received threats and abusive phone calls from ‘fans’ for ‘dropping’ Gavaskar. Eventually, the then BCCI president S Sriraman had to ‘request’ selectors to reinstate Gavaskar.
Then in 2012, Sachin Tendulkar was nudged by the selectors led by Sandeep Patil on his ODI future. Eventually, on the day the selectors named the squad to face Pakistan in a hurriedly arranged ODI and T20I series at home, Tendulkar called it a day in ODI cricket. Patil became the face of the move.
Ten years on, in a different era of Indian cricket, we are faced with the same issue of a premier batter of the time, Virat Kohli. India’s selectors led by Chetan Sharma (minus the missing fifth selector) have to make a call about Kohli. This time it is not about Kohli’s place in the ODI set-up, but the T20I line-up.
With the T20 World Cup just three months away, Kohli’s place is in question in the T20I format with many young claimants raising their hands quite confidently for an opportunity. Only time will tell if the selectors have the courage to take this tough call of leaving out Kohli completely from the squad.
As history has shown, taking tough calls on your premier batter of the time does not always go down well with ‘fans.’ Now add the social media fandom to this group and you have a heady cocktail to deal with as a selector.
It is unlike what happens in England where their premier batter Joe Root has been completely sidelined from the T20I format. He has scored more runs than any other batter in the past 12 months in Tests and is a regular in the ODI format. But for Root, a T20I place is a bridge too far because they have far too many options. England have made a call and they stick by it because they don’t confuse formats.
In India, unfortunately, the formats get confused and hence Kohli is regarded as a subject that cannot be messed with because of his stature. This is the superstar culture that Ramachandra Guha spoke about in his resignation letter as he quit the Committee of Administrators (CoA) appointed by the Supreme Court. The problem starts with Kohli’s position in the T20I line-up.
It is a fallacy to assume that the number three slot in the T20I line-up belongs to Kohli. In fact, the better position for Kohli in the T20I XI is to open. This is because, unlike him, the other batters are of the variety who can take control of the game. They are far more aggressive and are creative in their approach.
If Kohli opens, it allows him the opportunity to take a bit of time and then bat till the 20th over if possible. He planned to do that before the T20 World Cup in 2021, but then the typical Indian instinct to confuse formats took over. How can he open? It is a specialist's job, etc.
The fact is, in the T20 format, batting order is not a rigid concept unlike the Test and the ODI formats. Hence, the talk about someone coming in at number three, then Surya Kumar Yadav at number four, Hardik Pandya at five, and Rishabh Pant at six is a waste of time. In the last T20 World Cup, Kohli did not bat in two of the last three games of the tournament. If number three is his slot in the T20 format too, why did he not bat?
That is because in this format it is not about batting order but about the situation. That is where Kohli misses out. The day Kohli gave up his T20I captaincy, that very day he gave up the right to be the first choice in the XI. The problem is that India has a one-dimensional T20I line-up. The batters don’t bowl, and the bowlers don’t bat (at least some don’t). In a situation where you need 20 off 12 balls with two wickets in hand, you can write off India, but cannot write off some other sides.
This is where India needs to develop options in the middle-order who can bat creatively (Yadav), who can keep and bat aggressively (Pant/Karthik), bat and bowl seam (Hardik), and one more batter who can bat and bowl.
In this case, there are a few options that have emerged, especially in Deepak Hooda. Now, this is an untested option with Hooda’s hundred in the T20I series against Ireland being the most talked about effort by him. But if selectors plump for Hooda as the choice in place of Kohli for the T20 World Cup and he fails, Chetan Sharma & co will face similar brickbats.
Good thing is, unlike the previous set of selectors, the present lot don’t speak to anyone, and no one knows what they are thinking: it is all a state secret, unless the sources tell you otherwise.
The only other option really pushing Kohli in the T20I line-up is Shreyas Iyer. Again, he used to bowl a bit, but his batting is cut from the same cloth as Kohli’s and hence despite his recent showing, he will miss out. That leaves selectors with one real option in Hooda. Now, this is a gamble for the selectors, but one they must take unless Kohli agrees to open.
The problem is, opening has many claimants, including Ishan Kishan and the perennially injured Lokesh Rahul, alongside captain Rohit Sharma. The selectors will therefore have the tough task of making a call on Kohli’s T20I future.
With Kohli himself pulling out of the West Indies tour, the job, to some extent, has become easy for the selectors. It is now the final countdown to the T20 World Cup, so good performances by Hooda will probably push him up the pecking order.
This obsession with the batting order also has to end. We cannot imagine an Indian line-up without Kohli at number three. You can imagine, it is not Test cricket that you need to weather the bowling storm for two hours. If you keep weathering the storm in this format, then you would probably be out of the contest like India found out against New Zealand in the T20 World Cup in 2021.
Also, with skipper Sharma being a certainty, there can only be so many similar types of batters. Rahul will also slot back in, so Kohli will find it difficult to come back into the frame. By a process of elimination, Iyer should ideally not be part of the T20I set-up.
But despite all our arguments in favour of such decisions, the selectors will still play it safe and pick Kohli in the T20I format. Iyer too will be picked because of this fantasy of packing the side with too many batters.
The first T20 World Cup in 2007 was won because the selectors then realised that the format needed a lot of multipurpose players, and succeeded. In fact, the Indian selectors of the 1980s were far more creative as they picked multipurpose players and won world titles!
Unfortunately, thus far we have not seen such a thinking from the present lot of selectors. The selection of Harshal Patel and Karthik is probably an exception, because they are truly T20 specialists.
Above everything else, India needs to accept that their premier batter of a particular era is also human. If they don’t suit the shortest format at the time, it is not a scandal, it is a reality of the time. The day we accept that, we would have grown as a cricketing nation.
Kohli is on 99 T20I games at present, if he doesn’t play the 100th, he won’t be regretting that. It is his legacy as a chase master in ODI cricket and as a run machine in Test cricket that’s far more valuable for Indian cricket.
Something to think about even for Chetan Sharma & co (including the missing fifth selector).
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