Former English skipper Mike Brearley has praised Virat Kohli’s leadership skills but he also feels the danger of becoming “too authoritarian”.
Brearley, who played the international cricket from 1976 to 1981 (39 Tests and 25 ODIs), led the England side from 1977 to 1981. He was known one of the sharpest minds in cricket history. Observing the Indian skipper Virat Kohli’s leadership quality, the 76-year-old former English cricketer has impressed but also felt the danger of becoming “too authoritarian”.
Brearley told Times of India, “I love watching him (Kohli) play cricket. He is a very intelligent captain and has tremendous presence on the field. But he has so much charisma, articulacy and authority that there’s a danger of him becoming authoritarian.
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“He has got to have the capacity to tell people what to do. But if you become too authoritarian, then you are not open to other points of view. Becoming too influential can also mean that people are scared of giving you the opinion and then you don’t gather in. You need to have 11 captains in the team, just that you have to be the in-charge.”
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However, Brearley has also added that the English Test skipper Joe Root should learn from Kohli as he believes Root hasn’t done enough for his team.
Brearley said, “Having said that, I would add that Joe Root would do well to show some authority the way Kohli does. He would do well to articulate what he is looking for from his team, which I don’t know if he has done enough.
“Captaincy needs to be fairly intuitive. You can talk to some. You can talk to somebody else and try to figure out what happens in his mind.”
Brearley claims that the former Indian skipper MS Dhoni was the great ODI captain but unsure about his Test captaincy quality as he believes that Dhoni wasn’t flexible enough with his tactics.
The former English captain quoted, “I think MS Dhoni was a great ODI captain but I am not very sure whether he was a good Test captain. He wasn’t flexible enough with his tactics and I am not sure whether he was involved for long periods of time in the five-day format. But in ODIs, he was very good and he did things himself and took authority.”
