Opinion Baton passes
Team Virat is starkly different from Team Dhoni. The difference will be tested in the new year.
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M.S. Dhoni (L), Virat kohli
IT’S been exactly a year since M.S. Dhoni shocked the world by walking away from Test cricket suddenly, in the middle of a series. There’s hardly been a change in personnel in the Indian team since that dramatic evening at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. But still, 12 months on, the dressing room looks starkly different. Not just because there’s a new sheriff, Virat Kohli, in town. It’s more to do with the arrival of a new attitude, facilitated in turn by Dhoni’s absence.
At the time he took over the reins in Sydney, India had been victorious in one out of 12 Tests in the preceding 14 months. Since then, Kohli has led his young team to five wins in nine matches. But more than the results themselves, it’s the team’s new-found aggression and the incessant talk of fearlessness that have become the buzzwords of his nascent reign. Team director Ravi Shastri and his chemistry with a captain who seems to mirror his thoughts have gone a long way in creating this new world order too. Under Kohli, the Indians seem to embrace a “go for a win at all times even if it means you lose” approach. This is in contrast to his predecessor’s safety-first formula. Having said that, Dhoni’s last two years at the helm came in tough terrains overseas, while Kohli has begun his tenure in the comfort of the subcontinent. It was Dhoni who had set in motion the penchant to have pitches that brazenly favour the home team, while his successor seems to have taken it to a new level. Just ask Hashim Amla and Co. To boot, India will play a majority of their Test cricket in their backyard over the next 18 months.
But 2015 will not have chipped away into Dhoni’s legacy. He too had begun his captaincy with a bang, and fashioned Test series wins for India far away from home with his restrained aggression. It was only towards the end that his record started accumulating negatives even as his passport started to gather more stamps. Kohli’s real test will come when his frequent flyer points start piling up.
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