Kohli as Test captain: From stepping into Dhoni shoes to India’s epic wins

Kohli was appointed Test captain in 2014 when M S Dhoni stepped down in the middle of the series against Australia. Kohli scored 115 in India’s first innings, becoming the fourth Indian to score a hundred on Test captaincy debut. Filling the shoes of MS Dhoni was not going to be easy, but Kohli took leadership by storm, and quickly, he cemented himself as one of the best thinkers the country has seen in Test cricket.

In the Melbourne Boxing Day Test, he made his personal best Test score of 169 in the first innings while sharing a 262-run partnership with Rahane, India’s biggest partnership outside Asia in ten years.

Captaining the team for the second time, Kohli hit 147 in the first innings of the match and became the first batsman in Test cricket history to score three hundreds in his first three innings as Test captain. Kohli’s total of 692 runs in four Tests was the most by any Indian batsman in a Test series in Australia.

He is the third most successful captain in the history of Test cricket (who have led in at least 20 Tests) in terms of Test wins behind Steve Waugh (41 wins in 57 games) and Ricky Ponting (48 in 77 games). Kohli has 40 wins in 68 Tests in which he led India.

The leadership also brought out the best in Kohli and it saw the batter registering seven double-centuries in the longest format of the game. It was under Kohli’s leadership that India was crowned the number one Test team in the ICC Rankings for a continuous period of 42 months from October 2016 till early March 2020. Virat Kohli’s biggest win in the longest format came during 2018-19 as India won its first Test series Down Under. Under his captaincy, India also reached the finals of the World Test Championship (WTC).

Kohli has the most Test wins at home for India as captain. India’s victory against New Zealand at the Wankhede Stadium last year was Kohli’s 24th Test win at home. In the four Tests that India played against England in England last year, Kohli’s side went on to take a 2-1 lead and the last Test of the series will be played later this year.

Kohli’s decision to leave Test captaincy comes a day after India lost the three-match Test series against South Africa on Friday. Kohli was dealing with one controversy after another as he was recently removed as ODI captain by the BCCI after he decided to step down as Twenty20 captain. His decision to quit as Test skipper has come at a time when his relationship with the BCCI is so strained that he preferred to announce his decision on social media. Last year, Kohli had stepped down as the T20I captain and then he was removed as the ODI leader as the selectors wanted one captain for the white-ball format.