A lot has happened in Indian cricket in recent times and the central point of it has been the captaincy saga between Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Virat Kohli. The matter went to such an extent that surprisingly Kohli decided to step down as the captain of the Indian Test team on Saturday (January 15). The decision came just a day after India’s 2-1 Test series defeat against South Africa.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s decision to leave Test captaincy also came suddenly and people could not believe it initially. In the same manner, Kohli managed to provide a deep shock to everyone by relinquishing the captaincy of the T20 team first and now he stepped down as the captain of Test team of India. In a situation like this, another question which invariably comes up is that will Kohli also announce his retirement abruptly following Dhoni's footsteps?
Dhoni's decision
Former team India skipper Dhoni announced his retirement from Test cricket right after the Boxing Day Test match which was to be played in Melbourne during the Australia tour of 2014-15. On the other hand, Kohli, was given a new responsibility and he took over the captaincy of The Indian Test team.
And now almost in the same manner, Kohli, who took the Test team of India from No. 7 to No. 1 in just 7 years, also surprised everyone by abruptly leaving the captaincy. Another important question at this point of time is though who will be the next captain? The BCCI has not been able to decide yet.
Dhoni is the only Indian captain to win three ICC trophies as the captain of team India. Dhoni won the title of 2007 T20 World Cup, 2011 World Cup and 2013 ICC Champions Trophy for Indian cricket team.
Another shocker
In the year, 2017, Dhoni once again surprised everyone by suddenly announcing his decision to leave the ODI captaincy as well. After this, Kohli became the new captain of the ODI cricket team as well. However, Kohli also surprised everyone like Dhoni last year by announcing to leave the T20 captaincy in 2021. Later, the ODI captaincy was also snatched from the Delhi-born batsman.
Dhoni said goodbye to international cricket on August 15, 2020. Everyone was surprised to see that how Dhoni took such a big decision suddenly and there was no farewell for him. After playing his last ODI match in the year 2019, in the ICC World Cup match, Dhoni never played again in an international match.
Will Kohli, who followed Dhoni’s footsteps and learned the skills of international cricket from him, also abruptly retire and leave the cricket field? Only time will tell.
