File image of Virat Kohli
Former Indian cricketer and presently a cricket commentator and analyst, Sanjay Manjrekar on Friday opined that the Indian cricket team doesn't need split captaincy owing to Virat Kohli's prowess across formats.
The idea has been a talking point in the cricket fraternity since Rohit Sharma's successful campaign as a leader in the Nidahas Tri-series trophy and the Asia Cup in 2018. In the absence of regular players, Rohit had led a second-string side to glory, thus sparking the debate. In fact, many have put forth Rohit's IPL captaincy stat to back him, while a few veterans feel that the handing over the T20 captaincy to Rohit might reduce the burden on Kohli. But Manjrekar feels India do not need split captaincy especially when the incumbent is "still a good captain".
"Now, my theory of split captaincy is that you don't go looking to have split captaincy," Manjrekar said in his YouTube channel where he was answering questions posted by his twitter followers.
"So if you are fortunate to have a captain, who is good in all three formats and still a good captain, then you don’t need split captaincy."
"At the moment, you have Virat Kohli, who is excellent in all three formats, so there is no need for India to look at split captaincy, there might come a time in the future, who knows India might start looking for split captaincy," he explained.
He said that India was blessed to have captains like Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Kohli, and hence there is no need to have split captaincy.
"If India come to a situation where they have an excellent test captain and test player, but not good enough to be in 50 over and T20, then maybe you have a different captain.
"But, India at the moment are quite blessed and in the past as well, Dhoni was the same, when he was captaining all three formats, he was pretty good in all three formats," he signed off.
(with PTI inputs)
