In the opening Test match against England, Virat Kohli was missed by India both as a leader and as a batsman.
The captain of the Indian cricket team, Rohit Sharma, has not stopped drawing criticism since the team’s defeat to England in the first Test series match in Hyderabad. Ben Stokes’ team destroyed India, and many on-field choices were attributed to Rohit’s leadership abilities. Aiming directly at Rohit’s captaincy, former England skipper Michael Vaughan claimed that if Kohli had been leading the team the Indians would not have lost the first game of the series. Vaughan’s remarks follow those of a number of other former cricket players who have criticized Rohit’s leadership.
Even though Rohit is captaining India in all three forms of the game, Kohli did not make the starting eleven for India’s opening Test match against England in Hyderabad. Just a few days before the series began, the star batter withdrew for personal reasons.
During the Hyderabad Test, Virat was not available to Rohit for advice on critical on-field decisions, and India suffered as a result of the latter’s absence at the bat.
“In Test cricket, they sorely lacked Virat Kohli’s leadership. That week, India wouldn’t have lost the match if Virat had been captain. An fantastic player, Rohit is a legend. But I thought he just stopped talking entirely,” he said on the “Club Prairie Fire” YouTube channel.
In a previous editorial for The Telegraph, Vaughan questioned Rohit’s field positioning, bowling adjustments, and on-field decision-making, labelling his captaincy as “very, very average.”
“I felt that Rohit Sharma led the team in a very mediocre manner. He didn’t seem to be proactive with his bowling changes or field management, in my opinion, because he was so reactive. Additionally, Vaughan had written, “He had no response to Ollie Pope’s sweeps or reverse sweeps.”
It is unclear whether Kohli would be available for the Indian team’s second Test match against England, and his availability for the third match of the series is also uncertain.
