Virat Kohli on Saturday announced his decision to quit Test captaincy.
The 33-year-old leaves as the most successful India captain in Test cricket with 40 wins from 68 matches with the highlight being the wins in Australia and England last year.
It was under Kohli that team India become a force to reckon with in all conditions and won overseas.
While members of the cricketing fraternity are paying their tribute to Kohli on their respective social handles, some pundits and experts are attempting to understand the reason behind the unexpected decision.
Sanjay Manjrekar believes that Virat Kohli wanted to make himself‘unsackable’as skipper and hence decided to step down as Team India's captain.
While speaking to ESPNCricinfo, said the former India batter was surprised to see Kohli step out of the captaincy role across formats in such a short span of time and maintained that this decision had to with the latest Test series result.
‘It’s come one after the other in a very short span of time - giving up the white-ball captaincy and IPL captaincy as well. This also was unexpected, but it is interesting that all these three resignations of important positions have come so quickly one after the other.’
‘I think, in some way, he wants to make himself unsackable as captain. When he gets that vibe that his captaincy is under threat, he tends to quit,’ said Manjrekar.
The cricketer-turned-broadcaster then added, ‘The landscape is changing, the scenario around Virat Kohli that allowed him to be himself and flourish. Ravi Shastri coming in. He was uncomfortable when Anil Kumble was the coach and once Shastri and the support staff came in, he felt comfortable. The new coach (Rahul Dravid) is no Ravi Shastri. He would have got some inkling of the kind of support he was going to get.’
‘The regime change in the BCCI also has something to do with all these important announcements that Virat has made. Clearly, a guy who finds himself outside his comfort zone. Individually, his batting is not at its best. All that has just added up. He is not in a great space at the moment. These are all emotional decisions that one can understand.’
