|| India Correspondent ||

When Virat Kohli took over the reins of the Indian national cricket team, it was clear that he was going to adopt a different way towards the captaincy role than his predecessor MS Dhoni.

Kohli's strategy of playing five bowlers has fluctuated, as the team has changed this tactic numerous times according to the situation. However, one thing that has been constant in the team is the regular changes in the playing eleven.

Dhoni was known for identifying his best playing XI and he hardly made changes to his first-choice playing eleven.

On the other hand, Kohli has a pretty different approach when it comes to that particular decision. He and the current head coach Ravi Shastri embrace a 'horses for courses' perspective, regularly switching the team’s composition in order to suit the different situations.

While most of the captains prefer not to tinker with the winning combination, Kohli tries to challenge this theory and makes whatever changes he thinks is necessary. It’s a very unique decision itself, and here I try to break down the whole scenario and analyze whether this rotation policy is beneficial in the long run or not.

One of the major pros of this move is the fact that fast bowlers get the luxury of having their fair share of rest between the matches of a Test series. With the envious pool of fast bowlers that the Indian team possesses, it is important to keep rotating the pacers to manage the extensive workload, considering that most of these players play across multiple formats.

Previously, the Indian team suffered due to mismanagement of their pacers, and that has now been curbed by the rotation of certain players from the squad. Moreover, this helps the team to build a better, wider arsenal of fast bowlers, which is extremely important whilst touring overseas.

This also gives the fringe players a chance to stake their claim in the squad, which was quite unlikely in the earlier years when the playing XI hardly differed, as the concrete backbone of the team was retained constantly.

However, this leads us to question whether this approach is good enough in longer overseas tours when consistency is an aspect that many teams desire for. One common component of various successful teams from the past is the fact that they maintain a strong core of the team unless a dire situation comes up.

The Australian team in the mid-2000s that won 16 successive Test matches in a row, or Sourav Ganguly and Dhoni’s sides that dominated the Test scenario in the early and late 2000s always went into the field with a fixed set of batsmen in their side.

The Fab Four, consisting of the likes of Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Ganguly himself, and VVS Laxman, were of paramount importance while playing in away conditions. The team stuck with them even when any of them endured a bad patch of form, and eventually backed them to find their momentum back.

That was a major confidence-booster for any individual, mainly because it demonstrated that the team trusted them to come out on top despite some poor outings.

The current setup functions differently, and while they have every right to do so, some concerns regarding this are understandable. Except for Virat Kohli, who himself has defied consistency with his regularly brilliant performances, none of the other batsmen seem to have the luxury of having a stretch of matches to prove their mettle. Hence, the likes of Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, and KL Rahul have been dropped from the playing XI on quite a few occasions, when these decisions were arguably unjustified.