Poor Form, Captaincy, Internal Clashes Push Virat Kohli To A Corner

Virat Kohli-led Royal Challengers Bangalore faced a humiliating defeat against Kolkata Knight Riders last night in the league match held in Abu Dhabi. RCB was bowled out for just 92 runs. On the flip side, KKR chased the target in just 10 overs.

This disastrous batting performance came a day after Kohli’s announcement of stepping down as RCB’s captain after this season. A few days back, Kohli stated that he will be stepping down as T20I captain after the upcoming World Cup. Then, he also announced his retirement as captain of RCB. He stated that these decisions are being taken in order to reduce his workload.

Meanwhile, his recent performances are also making us think whether captaincy is affecting his batting too much. Virat didn’t do great in the recently held Test series against England. Neither is he doing great in the ongoing IPL.

The T20 World Cup is just a few weeks away and Kohli’s recent form in the format is a huge concern for the team. In IPL 2021, Virat played eight innings and scored only 203 runs, with an average of 29.00 and strike rate of 121.55. He scored a half-century only once in these eight games.

Kohli started off this year on a great note by performing extremely well against England in the T20 series held in March. But his form is very average in the IPL. Even last night, he got out by scoring just 5 runs. For the last few days, there has been a lot of noise going around about Kohli’s captaincy. There are reports stating that things are not going smooth between Virat and BCCI as well as between Virat and Rohit.

Are all these factors affecting his game? After RCB’s defeat last night, the team’s head coach Mike Hesson was asked whether Virat’s decision of stepping down as a captain affected the players’ performance on the ground. “No, I don’t think so,” replied Hesson in a smooth way.

Keeping aside these things, Team India needs Virat to give his absolute best in the next world cup as a player and the captain. If anything gets disturbed, it may affect the team and its performance. Thus, cricket fans opined that Kohli needs to be calm, ignore all the negativity and focus on his game for the next couple of months.