England tour: Is Ravi Shastri’s pitch for Kohli’s interim captaincy ill-timed?

The timing of Ravi Shastri’s taking up the cudgels for Virat Kohli, a month after the batting great’s shocking retirement from Tests but barely a week before the first India-England Test series to begin – leaves one wondering.

The former head coach of India, always known to be a great backer of Kohli, said that if he had his way, Kohli would have become the captain right after the debacle in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

Speaking during an interaction with Sony Sports, the popular TV pundit said: ‘’I feel sad that he’s (Kohli) gone the way he has — suddenly. I think it could have been handled better, maybe with more communication. If I had anything to do with it, I would’ve made him captain straight after Australia.’’

‘’Virat has announced his retirement from Test matches, which is sad, you know because he's a great player. A great player. It’s only when you go that people truly realise how big a player you were. Stats don’t do justice — it’s about the way he carried himself, especially as an ambassador for Test match cricket, particularly overseas. The way he played at Lord’s, and how his team turned things around — it was unreal. And I’m glad I was a part of it,’’ added Shastri.

 An emotional observation which he is entitled to, but given the fact the England tour came straight after the one against Australia and the new Test captain Shubman Gill is bracing up to take guard, such words from an influential figure like Shastri is ill-timed. It also lends credence to the speculative reports which were floating in Indian media that a certain senior player was keen to play Mr Fix-It by leading the team on a short term basis as Rohit Sharma was terribly short on self confidence and managed only 31 runs in the three Tests he played. 

Kohli, meanwhile, started on a promising note with a century in the first Test in Perth but scraped together a below-par 190 runs from five Tests at an average of 23.75. The 36-year-old, incidentally, had stepped down from Test captaincy on his own in 2022 and the grapevine has it that the team management (read: Gautam Gambhir) were keen to appoint someone on a long term basis since Jasprit Bumrah had opted out of the race for workload reasons.

It’s not exactly a secret that Gill’s choice as the Test captain has not been beyond criticism – but now that the dye is cast, a number of former Indian legends have already thrown their lot behind the youngster. There is a school of thought that Shastri’s role as TV pundit could often be tarred with a tinge of conflict of interest as he is also the co founder of Sporting Beyond, the new portfolio managers of Kohli since last year.

The biggest favourite in the endorsement sector by a country mile, Kohli had severed his ties with Cornerstone, a celebrity management company owned by his friend Bunty Sajdeh after a long association.

Is there something more to it about Shastri’s observation than what meets the eye? One never knows in Indian cricket.