Virat Kohli ended his captaincy tenure in January 2022, following India’s Test series loss in South Africa, despite taking a 1-0 lead in the series. A year before that, India, after conquering Australia under Ajinkya Rahane, had lost the important WTC Final 2021 to New Zealand.
Kohli’s tenure as India’s captain across formats was one of the most successful one, which included recording a first-time-ever Test series win in Australia, and not losing a single home Test series. India won several away white-ball series as well, however, failed to capture any ICC title under Virat.
One of the critical points of Kohli’s tenure was also the lack of backing he gave to some players while a few others got a long rope.
Here are 3 players who were treated unfairly by captain Virat Kohli:
Ambati Rayudu
The pain of how Ambati Rayudu‘s India career came to an end still lingers among the fans, and perhaps the player as well. Rayudu, after performing well for a couple of years, was looking set to feature at number 4 for India in the 2019 World Cup.
However, one ordinary series against Australia before the tournament, influenced the selectors and the team management headed by Kohli and Shastri to drop him and take “3-D” Vijay Shankar to the World Cup. And even after Dhawan and Shankar got injured during the World Cup, India called up Pant and Agarwal and not Rayudu, after which, Rayudu announced his India retirement.
Ambati Rayudu finished his ODI career with a terrific average of 47 in 55 matches.
Amit Mishra
Amit Mishra is totally justified in feeling upset and being treated unfairly by captain Virat Kohli. After all, how many bowlers do not get to play a single match after taking a five-wicket haul.
In Amit Mishra’s last ODI match, against New Zealand in October 2016, under MS Dhoni’s captaincy, Mishra returned with match-winning figures of 5/18. However, at the start of 2017, when Kohli took the white-ball captaincy, Mishra was dropped from the team and was never picked again.
It seems like Kohli didn’t believe Mishra to be a long-term prospect. This exclusion of the in-form veteran leg-spinner, just on the basis of his age, is very baffling.
Karun Nair
Karun Nair has all the reasons to feel hard done by captain Virat. After all, he got to play only in 3 more Test matches – all against a strong Australian bowling unit on tough pitches in the 2017 home series – after his incredible feat of becoming only the second Indian Test triple-centurion in 2016. Many feel Nair was harshly cast aside after that Australia series and should have been given more matches after his historic triple hundred.
