Should Kohli Be Sacked?

Captaincy, in IPL it’s not an easy job. Especially if you are someone who has been dominating on the world stage consistently, be it scoring runs or taking wickets. Virat Kohli falls in this bracket. Consistent for team India, both as player and a captain. Captaincy is not easy in this tournament. Here you have team owners as film stars, corporates, which deal with you in other ways as compared to your cricket board.

Kohli, the most marketable player in the RCB camp, has so much burden on his shoulders. From personal performance to overall team performance, he is accountable for all. The question which lies here to be answered is “Should the team management look beyond Kohli?”

Answer to this depends solely on Kohli. For the last two seasons RCB’s performance has been unacceptable. 2016, when Kohli was on peak in the IPL scoring 4 centuries, RCB were in the finals. But what happened after that? It was a downward graph for RCB since then and it’s not rising, even now. Losing all the 5 matches has left the team and fans especially, frustrated. Trollers have found new meme material in RCB and Kohli being the most popular player, is at center of all this. Considering all this in mind and coming back to the question, will someone replace Kohli as captain?

Just take Ganguly for example, he is best being captain. He performed his best when he was at the helm. It’s was not easy for him to comeback in the team and give his all as a player under someone else’s captaincy. He just simply was not meant to play like that. It was hard for him not being the captain. Similar will be the situation if Kohli is removed as captain. Even if the team management approaches him to play with less burden as a captain, and let some else worry about other matters, it might be too harsh on him. Kohli is someone who gives his best, when under pressure. But is the pressure too much?

Team managements need to be very clear about what they want and what they consider best for the team’s future. Management needs to figure out how difficult will it be for Kohli to adjust not being captain. If the situation is bad and you need to get rid of the player, then you have to completely retool the team. When KKR decided in 2011 that Sourav was not the direction they will take as captain, having him as a player doesn’t make sense. And it was a really big call. Even today if same story follows with Kohli, RCB might loose it’s fan base which is made up of Kohli fans.

Two options are there to consider. Either they can go up to Virat and tell that it’s not working for you and also not for us, so what we are going to do is that we will trade you with some other franchise for some other valuable players. If Virat doesn’t want to do that then the only option which might be pursued is that Virat plays without any burden and captaincy can be handled by some other player.

Kohli might have said that he will play this season with a free mind and without any pressure but after 5 losses pressure is there on him. He is burdened with the captaincy and it’s taking a toll on him. Team management has to decide which patch to choose. It’s either this way or that. There no in between or other road available.