Division of labour: Could India benefit from Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma sharing leadership duties?

A smiling Rohit Sharma sat down for the press conference on Friday night in Dubai. His team had just crossed the line in the Asia Cup final after a thrilling last ball win over Bangladesh. After the usual instructions from the BCCI media in-charge, the floor was opened to questions. You would have thought the first question would be about the match itself, a cracker as it turned out to be. But it wasn’t. Rohit was asked, being one of the most successful IPL captains and now leading India to wins in two multi-nation events, whether he is ready for the full-time role. You know, the one occupied by a certain Virat Kohli.

Rohit smiled, let the question sink in as the gathered press chuckled, and said: “I mean, we have just won the Asia Cup, so I am ready, yeah. I will be ready whenever the opportunity comes.”

What else was he going to say? That he wasn’t ready? Of course not. But the way Rohit answered the question was partly in jest, and yet measured — not a long, winding reply that he tends to give to most questions. It was still enough for it to become the headline next day. PTI, the news agency that supplies news copies to most media houses, ran with it and so it was widely reported. And to think the exchange barely took a minute.

But it also brought up an interesting talking point. Could Indian cricket look at the possibility of sharing the captaincy load between Kohli and Rohit on a more permanent basis?

Question of workload

Kohli took over the Test captaincy from Dhoni in 2014 but it wasn’t until January 2017 that he became captain across all three formats for India. But among all countries in the last five years, Kohli is already up to No 3 in the list of captains who have lead their countries for the most number of times.

The numbers above are without including the IPL where Kohli seems to be under the most stress as a captain these days and that’s a format where Rohit has shown he can thrive. With India not attaching real importance to the shortest format apart from the lead up to the World T20 (they barely change the squad around between ODIs and T20Is when travelling overseas, for instance), making Rohit share the load with Kohli is something that is definitely worth considering.

It’s no secret that India play an awful lot of cricket these days and Kohli himself has stressed on the importance of getting sufficient rest. And for a player who is switched on every minute he is on the field, and motivated more than most cricketers off the field, the stress of captaincy across all formats can get pretty taxing even if his batting numbers are only improving. But towards the end of the England Test series, you could see him getting jaded. On the first morning of the final Test, for instance, Kohli actually looked subdued on the field for long parts. It’s something you rarely see on the cricket field, especially when there is a ‘Kohli cam’ in all games. It was no wonder, then, that he was rested for the entirety of Asia Cup.

And up stepped Rohit. The man who has come in as a back-up for Kohli when he has been rested for the not-so-important series in the past (no offence meant to Sri Lanka and the likes), had his first real test as a captain. The Asia Cup featured five of the 10 teams that will be at the World Cup next year and all of them were, fitness permitting, at full strength. This was, on paper, not an easy task but to his credit, Rohit made it look like a walk in the park for the most part.

At ease in the role

During the Asia Cup, you could also see that Rohit was at ease as the leader on the field. Of course, he has been captaining the Mumbai Indians since 2013, when he took over from Ricky Ponting in the middle of the season and led his side to their first title. He has since won two more IPL titles as captain.

And that experience showed during the Asia Cup, whenever the opposition threw a challenge at him. Hong Kong looked like they would pull off one of the greatest modern day upsets with a 174-run opening wicket partnership chasing 286, but Rohit never panicked and kept rotating his spinners around until Kedar Jadhav and the rest choked the Hong Kong batsmen and they wilted. He showed a willingness to change set plans like when Bhuvneshwar Kumar was hit for 17 runs in the death overs by Pakistan — Rohit immediately brought on Yuzvendra Chahal in the next over, even though the former is one of his main weapons to finish the innings. And it worked wonders.

His field placements were innovative and often-times attacking. He rotated the bowlers around in the heat and kept them fresh through the fifty overs. He had MS Dhoni to help him, of course, but there was enough evidence during the tournament that captaincy comes naturally to the Mumbaikar.

Contrasting styles

Overall, Rohit brought in a measured aggression to the role which, as he himself acknowledged, was something that he has learned and inculcated from Dhoni over the years.

He also said the right things when asked the tricky questions. When discussing the middle order issue, Rohit spoke about how he believes in giving the assurance to his players that they will play through the tournament — something he told Dinesh Karthik and Ambati Rayudu beforehand.

“When we came here, I wanted to give them the assurance that they will be playing all games. That’s how you make players. If you know after two games you are going to get dropped, it’s not easy for any player. I wanted to give everybody a fair run and play more games. That’s how you understand a player’s capabilities. One odd game, you can’t judge a player,” Rohit said after the final.

It might not have worked, in terms of India finding an answer to the problem, but it showed a leader thinking in the right direction.

This is not to say, before you get all worked up, that Kohli is a bad captain. The jury might still be out for him in the longest format overseas, but he has shown that he can conquer pretty much any other challenge that comes his way. Questions did pop up at the end of the England series, but allow Rahul Dravid to explain why there is no need to panic when it comes to Kohli’s captaincy stint.

“Like with anything else, captaincy, a lot is dependent on the performances of the team and the kind of team you are able to put together. With his batting he keeps improving, he keeps getting better, he keeps learning and I am sure that is what he wants to do with his captaincy,” Dravid told News18 in a recent interview when asked about whether Kohli, the captain is not the finished article yet.

So it’s not a question of finding an improvement over Kohli. In fact, if Kohli must keep improving as a captain like he does a batsman, a break from one format might just do the trick. It might keep Kohli fresh for the Tests and ODIs, while providing him the opportunity to enjoy being just a batsman for a while in the shortest format, a privilege that he doesn’t enjoy anywhere right now. It would also help India with grooming a genuinely world class white-ball player in Rohit as a back-up captain.

This, after all, might just be a win-win scenario for everyone concerned.