One of the biggest criticisms of Virat Kohli’s captaincy has been that he is yet to win an ICC trophy for India. India won three ICC events under the captaincy of MS Dhoni and went into the semi-final of the 2015 World Cup and 2016 World T20, apart from the final of the 2014 World T20 under him.
Meanwhile, Kohli has led India to the final of ICC Champions Trophy 2017 and semi-final of ICC World up 2019. Though the team is ranked no.1 in Tests, this inability to procure limited-overs silverware has become a point of concern.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar touched upon this issue in the latest episode of ESPNCricinfo Cricket Baazi.
"The last we won was the Champions Trophy in 2013. And since then, there have been only 3-4 ICC tournaments and we have made it to the semis or the finals about 2-3 times,” he said.
"In the 2015 World Cup, we lost to Australia in the semi-final. And in the 2019 World Cup, it was bad luck. An early loss of three top-order batsmen cost us the game. It rarely happens that in a match after dismissing the opposition for under 250, you are get bowled out. In that entire World Cup, Rohit Sharma had scored five or six centuries, K.L. Rahul was in good form, Virat Kohli played as always and we had MS Dhoni as well in the team,” Kumar said.
"Even in the 2017 Champions Trophy final, things changed after Jasprit Bumrah's no-ball. It's not like we've had a one-sided loss or we went down without a fight. We've always lost due to an unfortunate event or incident. Although, the 2017 Champions Trophy final was a one-sided loss where they outplayed us,” Kumar pointed out.
Therefore he mentioned that it is difficult to pinpoint the exact reason for the loss. "And it's difficult to pinpoint the exact reason for the loss. But losing these knockout matches masks the fact that we actually played very well through those tournaments,” he said.
India had lost only one match in 2019 World Cup league stages, to England and went into the semi-finals at the top of the points table. Both captain Virat Kohli and head coach Ravi Shastri have pointed their fingers at "45 minutes of bad play" for their exit from the 2019 World Cup.
