Has there been a more intense duo at the top of Team India since Gary Kirsten struck up a partnership with Mahendra Singh Dhoni? The Anil Kumble-Virat Kohli pairing in the Test team as coach and captain now may probably rate even higher in terms of intensity. Much has been staked on this new partnership delivering for Indian cricket. The world’s top Test ranking would be welcome, of course, even if it does come these days on statistical quirks than genuine away performances because all top teams, including India, have hit a plateau. Victory in the West Indies would help the stats.
The first problem Kohli’s Indians will come up against is one of perception. It’s never a win-win situation on a tour of the West Indies these days. If a team wins in the Caribbean, it is put down as just something all touring teams do. And if they don’t, the cricket world might even feel like laughing at them. Down in the Silicon Valley, they call this FOMO or ‘fear of missing out’. No team touring the Caribbean can come back without a series win and not invite a measure of ridicule, however capable the home team is of delivering surprises, though they generally do so in the shorter formats of the game.
There is no Mona Lisa moment to be had in the West Indies in a Test series as a win won’t merit such a description. Coming to think of it, all such moments are in the past for Team India – the 2011 World Cup and the 2012 Champions Trophy. Given the paucity of such lustrous trophies, Virat Kohli’s triumph in Sri Lanka last year seems to have been the best thing that happened to Team India in the most recent past. The thought of a young team bonding well carried the ring of optimism. While the fans may be struck more by the here and now, sporting teams tend to talk a lot about building for the future, which is where we stand now with Kohli’s men in the Caribbean.
Dhoni’s men too managed a win there in 2012 in what was a laborious series of dull cricket. That was in extremely controversial times when the team rushed there within a few days of the IPL ending and the subsequent 8-0 performances in England and Australia saw the heaping of ridicule on a team that had been No. 1 in the Test rankings in the previous 18 months or so. With the pitches in the Caribbean having slowed up considerably since the days when they used to sport a ‘mirror’ kind of shine, the quicks of the Winides are not the threat they were.
Young Kohli’s side start with all the advantages though they don’t have the batting depth of old when the golden quartet used to walk in one by one and then there was a younger Dhoni who was the best armour to have in the late middle order. Kohli’s young men have to stand on their own feet, a capacity for which they showed not only in Sri Lanka but earlier also in the series in Australia where Kohli took over as captain after Dhoni’s abrupt departure from the Test scene.
There are some who are even predicting now that a clash of personalities will come about in the Kohli-Kumble regime because both are men known to be capable of calling a spade a shovel. Kohli is, however, far wiser than that. In his vigourous ambition to become the best skipper India ever had, he has pushed himself to extremes as an athlete, but then he has also matured as a person who knows what it is to be the national Test captain. The occasional sparks may fly, but Kohli Mk II, after his accession, is trying to become a person far removed from the one who ‘gave the bird’ to some Australian fans not so long ago.
The West Indies tour will test Kohli’s personality more than his batting acumen. After his all-inclusive IPL experiences, Kohli will perhaps also know that you cannot lose the enjoyment of the game, not even in pursuit of excellence. The Caribbean is a place which will often remind you there is more fun to life, even in paradise on earth.
