Debate around Virat Kohli's captaincy a distraction: Kevin Pietersen

Former England batsman Kevin Pietersen has said that he doesn’t really see any threat to Virat Kohli’s captaincy but admitted that it is impossible to avoid the debate over the topic. 

“I absolutely don’t expect things to change, but it is impossible to avoid the continuing debate around the Indian Test match captaincy,” Pietersen wrote in his blog post for ‘Betway’.

Kohli has now lost four Test matches as the skipper while Rahane led India to a series win in Australia in his absence.  “Virat Kohli has now lost four consecutive Test matches as skipper, and has Ajinkya Rahane, who just led India to a famous series win in Australia, in his side,” he added.

The Indian team is presently playing a four-match Test series against England at home and trail 0-1 after losing the first match in Chennai. Chasing 420, India were bowled out for 192 to lose the match by 227 runs. 

But the former England skipper backed Kohli of leading the team to series win. “On social media, every radio station, every television channel and every news channel, there are very deep discussions around what should happen. Captaining your country is very difficult and unfortunately this is the nature of the beast,” he said. 

“It’s one more distraction that Kohli doesn’t need but he is, of course, capable of leading his side to a victory in the second Test to quieten things down a bit,” Pietersen said.

The two sides will now lock horns against each other in the second in Chennai slated to begin on Saturday.