Ajit Agarkar’s chess move for Indian cricket: Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli can play, but performances will decide their tenure

The message is clear to both Rohit and Virat Kohli who will be 37 next month, that the door isn’t entirely shut on individual careers, but the reins to run and steer Indian cricket has been snapped.

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It also remains to be seen if the two carry on after the Australian series. Do they have enough desire and will to keep sweating as players with minimal international cricket practice and have that motivation to play the next World Cup? That time will tell, but it’s clear that to do that, they will have to keep performing as players.

Stripping Rohit of captaincy is a clear message in that regard. Rohit the captain had a great run, and can be proud of the fact that he came within a game on that hazy November night in Ahmedabad in 2023 to winning the three premier ICC white-ball tournaments. But that’s how life rolls sometimes.

It’s particularly befitting that both Rohit and Kohli now only play the 50-over ODI format. Kohli is the acknowledged ODI master, almost peerless over the years in the way he is intimate with the pulse of the game. Similarly, since his childhood, if there was one format that Rohit had coveted after, it was ODI.

He had told this newspaper once how as a kid he would discuss and dissect the ODI games threadbare with his uncles. Kohli knew the soul of the format, and Rohit knew how to advance India into an aggressive template that matches the new avatar of ODI in the T20 era. Both have been immensely successful in this format, and it’s fitting that their last lap for India is in ODIs. It’s a format that comes naturally to them, and more than anyone else in this current team, these two know its rhythm and soul.

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As for losing captaincy, in case there are any misgivings, Rohit can look at his own words told to this newspaper just before the last ODI world cup about how he has been lucky to be blessed with the honour of the captaincy. “Yuvraj Singh has been such a match winner for India, he should have been the captain at some stage but he didn’t get it. That’s life. I got it and I am grateful for it,” he had told The Indian Express.

Captaincy does come with an expiry date, and he has had a great run, particularly in the white-ball format.

The act of selectors to take away the captaincy at this stage in his career, looking at the future of the Indian team, isn’t shocking, though the fanbases in these social media days can make it sound that way. We saw the understandable virtual tears when Kohli and Rohit’s Test careers came to an end. But the big players of the earlier generation too didn’t exactly have grand farewells. Sachin Tendulkar did, but even he, as this newspaper had reported then, was spoken to by the selectors and the board, and was slowly nudged towards announcing that the West Indies series in 2013 would be his last. Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman quit after a bad series in Australia, Sourav Ganguly was nudged out, and Virender Sehwag still sighs to this day that he never got a farewell.

The run of time doesn’t wait for anyone. And now it’s up to the two stars of this generation to see how they want to keep running with one caveat. Agarkar’s panel has ensured that it won’t be left just to their whims, but performance will be the key to decide the opening of the exit door. It might seem tough on the two stars and their fanbases, but it’s the right way to go for Indian cricket.

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