Was Kumble's Fall Inevitable?

With Anil Kumble stepping down as coach in controversial circumstances, after a highly successful year at the helm, it’s worth taking a look at the events that may have led to one of India’s finest cricketing minds calling it quits. 

- Anand Vasu

There is a joke doing the rounds in Indian cricket at the moment: apparently there is only one person in India who Virat Kohli cannot have removed, and that is Narendra Modi. Indian cricket has always afforded its stars a special status, usually reserved for film actors, politicians, heads of state and the like. But, as George Orwell put it so succinctly in Animal Farm, all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. No cricketer in India has ever enjoyed the carte blanche that Kohli insists is his right.

Being captain of the Indian cricket team does come with some privileges, of course. After all, when the team loses or is going through a bad patch, it is the captain who cops the most flak. Therefore it makes sense for the captain to have the final say in many cricketing matters, because the buck does stop with him.

However, Kohli’s understanding of these privileges is a touch different than others. The warning signs should have been obvious when Kohli ensured that Harsha Bhogle, a commentator with experience and pedigree, well-respected around the world, was removed. The reasons for Bhogle’s ouster from television screens was never quite made public, but it essentially came down to Kohli’s belief that the commentator was talking more about pitches than India’s performances in the home series against South Africa. Now, in Bhogle’s defence, the pitches served up in that series were rank turners, and commentating for the world feed rather than an India-only audience, it was an obvious talking point. However, the fact that Kohli thought it was entirely reasonable to have Bhogle removed — and we are talking about wrecking a person’s livelihood here — was a dangerous sign.