4 areas where Virat Kohli needs to improve

"Virat Kohli scores a fantastic century," words like these have become household stuff for any cricket fan nowadays. Unquestionably, Virat has been the best batsman for a quite long time now. With impressive records to his name, Kohli has been the driver of India's batting line-up in the recent past. In short, there is no doubt about Kohli as a batsman. But there is a lot to discuss Virat as a captain. Typically not in a negative sense.

Undoubtedly, Virat has been an incredible captain for India irrespective of the formats. To be fair enough, Kohli has done a fair job as a captain, but there are some areas where he needs to improve.

Thus, in this article, we will look at four primary areas where Virat needs to improve. This feature has come up as constructive criticism. Hence, I plead the audience to go through the minutes of the article with a great sense of fad.

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#1 Press Talks

The love-hate relationship between Virat Kohli and the reporters have now been a household thing. Recently, in a post-match press conference, Kohli had a healthy verbal face-off against a reporter who asked Kohli about his opinion on whether the current Indian team is the best among the previous Indian teams in last 15 years. Kohli threw back the question to the reporter to which he replied, "I'm not sure." Kohli retorted, "You're not sure? That is your opinion. Thank you."

Well, this wasn't the first incidence that Kohli (after assuming the role of a captain) was seen taking a toll on the reporter's question. One similar incident took place in South Africa recently when India lost the series 2-1.

We all agree to the fact that the captain has to be positive but in a more societal way. Much like how Dhoni dealt with the reporters. In crisp, Kohli needs to be more reasonable and answerable on this front. He needs to be more of an approachable entity that reporters could resort to while asking the questions.

Thus, this remains one of the few areas that Virat needs to improve on.

#2 Team Selection

India fought hard in the Test series against England. Agreed. The scoreline 4-1 doesn't depict the whole story. Fair point. But, did India put their best XI in all of the five Tests? No. Right? There were many miscalculations that India made while selecting the best XI for all of the Tests. Dropping Pujara was the biggest among them and to an extent including Kuldeep Yadav in the second Test.

Although one might argue that these were just a handful of changes that Kohli made, one must agree to the fact that 80 per cent of the problems occur due to 20 per cent errors. Besides, India has faced this quandary in the past as well with the Test series against South Africa being the recent one.

Thus, Virat needs to be more equable while selecting his XI for any game, especially the Tests.

#3 Instilling confidence in the players and the mainstays

Rahane and Pujara need to be backed to perform

"It would have been better if they had said at the start of the tour, ‘guys, we will go with the same team for the first three Tests. Do your best.’ That gives a different kind of confidence. Kohli is a good man and wants the best for the team and doesn’t mean to create it but the changes make you doubt yourself. It’s our mistake to feel like that probably but we are humans," a player said to Indian Express in the recent past.

“You start to second guess. Kyun aisey kar rahe hain?(Why are you this?) You then start feeling you are on your own here,” said another player.

These words from the members of the Indian team unquestionably depict the policy of Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri. The policy could have been apt for any format but Tests. In the longest format of the game, it is the confidence that does the trick for a player especially a batsman.

To deduce, a sense of instilled confidence can do the trick for Virat Kohli. More importantly, Kohli needs to create a sense of confidence among the Indian mainstays (Rahane and Pujara) as well.

#4 DRS Calls

In the current scheme of cricket, DRS (Decision Review System) has become an essential part of the game, particularly in Test cricket. Pending the fact that a team gets only a few DRS attempts, its effective usage becomes the matter of discussion.

With an aggressive head, Virat Kohli is the one who operates with full enthusiasm. Although this trait of Kohli brings more good than bad, on selective occasions this very trait of Virat tends to take over the control of him in case of DRS calls. As a result, he ends up being on the losing side (in case of DRS calls) quite a few times. Let us bring the perspective into numbers.

Ever since the last Test series against England in 2016/17, Kohli chose to challenge umpire's decision on 93 occasions. Out of these 93 DRS calls, only 15 went Virat's way while ten got retained (umpire's call) and the remaining (68) squandered. Although these numbers differ from bowler to bowler, the captain is to charge for this.

Thus, giving a brief look at the numbers, we could gather that Kohli needs to improve on DRS front which would considerably help India in the course of the match.