Virat Void That Caught India On The Wrong Foot

Transitions don't come with a notice, especially when it's a team sport as layered as cricket.

- Somshuvra Laha

Ticking over two years now, a feeling has grown that the time to prepare for a future without Virat Kohli could arrive any day. Till it did last month in Hyderabad, albeit for only a few matches, but startling every stakeholder in its wake. More so because Kohli was shaping up to hit his gold standard of batting with an average of 55.91 last year.

Considering the unprecedented, extended and alarming dry spell that he had to endure preceding 2023, there couldn't have been a bigger reaffirmation of India's blind faith in Kohli. But what it also perhaps did was subconsciously postpone the need to find a rightful heir apparent anyway.

Cut to when Kohli has made himself unavailable for the entire series, India's batting is waiting to become a microcosm of this dilemma. The start at Hyderabad, which at 80/1 was calming anyway, carried more promise because KL Rahul was to come. And as long as he was at the crease, India's batting still had a sense of context and purpose.

At Visakhapatnam though, Shreyas Iyer offered no comfort at all. Now that neither Rahul nor Iyer are available for selection, the question of who will fill the considerable boots of Kohli is becoming even more inevitable, if not downright unsettling.