Is dividing India’s cricket captaincy as part of a post-World Cup rebuild a good idea?

The unique thing about the England team that won the World Cup, questionably according to many, was that there were two captains on the field. While Eoin Morgan, one-time Irish cricket star, lifted the trophy on behalf of his adopted nation, among those who celebrated with the team was its batting talisman Joe Root, the captain of the English test cricket team. Morgan has completely focussed on white ball cricket and given up his ambition to play test cricket while Root continues playing white ball cricket but without the stress of captaincy. And this has led to the English coming to dominate both the long and short versions of the game. Many other nations, India included, have tried such split captaincy. When MS Dhoni quit test cricket, Virat Kohli became test captain while Dhoni remained captain of the shorter versions. Yet, this split captaincy didn’t win fans among cricket administrators and followers in India and Kohli was soon elevated to being captain of all three formats of the game. Australia had a bit more success with the split captaincy format, having a separate captain for its T20 side very early on, even though right now Aaron Finch is the team’s undisputed captain in all formats.

So what has changed now that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is reconsidering splitting the captaincy and is it a good idea? Should Rohit Sharma, India’s explosive opening batsman, become the captain of the Indian team in white-ball cricket? Sharma’s success as a captain can be judged by the success of his leadership of the Mumbai Indians T20 franchise in the Indian Premier League. Some also claim that Virat Kohli is being overburdened with captaincy, and as undoubtedly one of the best batsmen in the world, he is wilting under the pressure. This is possibly one reason that he quit the captaincy of his IPL franchise team, the Royal Challengers Bengaluru. On the other side, many would argue that a common leader allows all team members to walk the same talk rather than be confused by divergent voices. Will this then be antithetical to unity? Only if you look at it egoistically.