On August 2, a day before the Indian team left for Sri Lanka, skipper Virat Kohli, when asked if the three-Test series would be a good barometer to judge him as a leader, aid, “To judge or to not judge, isn’t in my hands. Six matches will be done. Whether we win, draw or lose, I don’t think it will affect our processes much.”
“I like to lead the team in a certain way. I’ll try doing that and help the team win. The challenge is to take everybody together and see how to execute the idea. You can judge, right now, may be after five matches or after five months. It’s not in my control. We will prepare with hundred per cent commitment and will want to continue the way we played in Australia and thereby create a pattern.”
Polished assessment
Back then he seemed like a quintessential modern-day manager, talking about processes, goals, methods, management, communication, working relationships, delegating responsibility etc. Like someone who believes in a continuous performance appraisal and not in something that has time-bound markers. It is not to say that these didn’t exist before with other captains, but from him, it came across as omething much more polished.
At the end of the series, which India won 2-1, it’s tough for one to shed that image of his.
“It is very important to back individuals,” he said after thewin on Tuesday. “And get the best out of them because you will never know until you give them the chance to express themselves and how good they are in pressure situations.”“I don’t want to say I’ve grown as a captain because if I make a mistake again, I’ll be made a child again. Let the things be the way they are right now. The mistakes I make in future will be corrected. Time for us to celebrate a series win.” This persona of its skipper, in a nut-shell, has been the essence of this series for India. It lived in the moment and shed the negativity. But at the same time learnt from the past and never lost sight of the future. Transitional sides tend to seek solace in short-term successes, to calm the nerves and bring down anxiety levels. But this Indian side, at least based on the evidence gathered so far, has done everything but that. No preset template It showed in the way it steadfastly refused to drop its five bowler experiment amidst clamour for batting reinforcements after the humiliating defeat in Galle; in the way it displayed great powers of recovery and won the next two Tests; in the way how team selectionswere managed —more horses-for-courses than sticking to a preset template; and in the way how mistakes were quickly rectified. The last of them was particularly revealing. During two phases when Sri Lankan batsmen dominated, Dinesh Chandimal in the first Test and Rangana Herath and Kusal Perera in the final Test, the old defence of “nothing much could be done” surfaced. On the final day however, when Angelo Mathews and Perera held the upper-hand, the side outthought the opposition. If anything the win was a triumph of the collective. “Guys can have their individual performances and walk away with that happiness,” Kohli said. “But unless you win as a team, you won’t really get that positivity around the group.” Indians didn’t top the run charts. But they occupied six of the top eight slots. There were just two century-makers for Sri Lanka. For India there were five. R. Ashwin and Amit Mishra wrecked havoc in the first two Tests in Galle and P. Sara Oval respectively. At the Sinhalese Sports Club, when conditions weren’t exactly suited for them, they wanted to be a “good foil” for the seamers. At the end of the tour when he was asked what exactly has changed in this team ever since it started a world tour of sorts in late 2013 from South Africa, Kohli said, “I can’t really pinpoint. But the one difference I have seen is we have capitalised on the important moments in the game. In Test cricket an hour of bad cricket or bad execution can turn the whole game around. Just the way the guys have responded to situations, that has changed.” “We have gone through a learning curve. In the last two years a lot of people have gone from two Test matches to 15-16 matches to 20 matches. That has been a learning.” It has now culminated in India’s first away series win in four years, first-ever away win after being 1-0 down and first in Sri Lanka since1993. It is indeed a great win — Sri Lanka’s deficiencies notwithstanding — and a small gingerly step on the long and arduous road towards greatness.
