Is it correct to judge Virat Kohli and his India captaincy based on IPL success?

Rohit Sharma who recently won his record-breaking fifth IPL title as a captain has now become a well-proven entity. Irrefutably, he has emerged as a sharp-witted individual who has shown the ability to remain calm when it comes to combating high-pressure situations or whether it is about making those primitive changes which help in getting crucial breakthroughs. His captaincy does have over the years showcased the sense of control and the ingenious mind which he can manifest onto the field.

But after grabbing his fifth IPL trophy there’s a brouhaha amongst the fans and cricket pundits that he should now replace Virat Kohli as India’s next T20I skipper. This wrangle has also gained its importance mainly because of Kohli’s reasonably poor record as a skipper of RCB thus commanding a sufficient reason for his sacking as a skipper.

Kohli’s numbers as captain

But rather than passing a quick judgement let’s have a comparison on merit and for that, we need to look into Kohli’s T20I numbers as a captain. Overall his win percentage stands at 65% which also raises itself to 75% since the start of 2019 i.e 12 wins from 16 games. Although the numbers are all from bilateral cricket overall they do paint a rosy picture for Kohli to continue.

?? ??????? ?? ?? conquered ✅

Team India under Captain Kohli are now unbeaten in 1️⃣1️⃣* consecutive T20Is!

* 10 wins and 1 no-result @imVkohli#PlayBold #WeAreChallengers #TeamIndia #DownUnder pic.twitter.com/kRcRjQMgPD

— Royal Challengers Bangalore (@RCBTweets) December 8, 2020

Secondly, when it comes to captaining the Indian team in T20Is which is probably much well equipped in terms of quality and skillsets in terms of players than captaining the RCB the team which is actually well known for their fair share of problems and struggles over the years in the IPL do firmly form a completely two different sets of propositions.

In fact, it’s comprehensible when Kohli gets directly blamed for RCB’s poor results as a captain but there’s no complete sense of logic if that blame gets carried out at him as being an India captain.

Different challenges

What we need to completely differentiate from our minds is that international and franchise cricket are two different prospects wherein franchise cricket the onus is normally in the hands of the franchise’s chief or executives who mainly have the powers when it comes to building a team or buying a desired set of players at the auction table. Take RCB’s instance, Over the years we have seen them fail in the IPL because of their lack of Indian core along with their bowling at the death. It’s mainly because of their lack of getting quality players at the auction table. Keep Mumbai Indians, on the other hand, whose all IPL glories have become possible because of their brilliant auction strategy along with prolonged scouting plans.

In short, IPL is a place where a team is eventually made at an auction table irrespective of whether their targeted prospects do come in or not which is a lot different than when it comes to captaining India where everything is at your disposal. Hence, the IPL can’t form a base when it comes to judging Virat Kohli’s India captaincy.