Wrong Chappell.
Yeah realised that. All I read was Chappell in a captaincy thread, thats where my mind goes.
The reason I rate Ganguly higher is because he helmed the team to a shore is some pretty dark and disoriented times, and had nurtured many more players than Kohli. On the Australia win, I think Ganguly's home series win was tougher and the Australia tour that was actually a much bigger achievement in my book; Kohli left his team after a shameful loss at the first game (not his fault really, but I never took that kindly).
Kohli introduced an aggressive mindset into the team, took after the humiliating losses under Dhoni and made test cricket exciting again for India supporters. Further he helped raise the standard of fitness in the team. I would rate that as higher than mentoring players(although that was very important).
Yeah, but aggression was first introduced by Ganguly to the Indian team (well Pataudi honesty), Kohli definitely instilled a great mindset but he took it waaayyyyy too far sometimes. And while he did raised the fitness standards, the level of fielding especially at the close range didn't improved. Not to mention I have questions about some of these extreme fitness standards, as Sarfaraz Khan was left out of the squad while averaging 70+ regularly in Ranji trophy for said fitness, while many frankly mediocre players got in. I would definitely take mentoring the likes Yuvraj, Sehwag, Harbhajan, Kaif, Zaheer, etc over the fitness standards.
Fair points, tho I felt atleast as a personality, Kohli was more inspirational and India’s best captain(ex. the 60 overs of hell incident). Overall cause of Kohli’s mindset, the emphasis on pace, and fitness standards, I’d take him marginally over Ganguly
Kohli just got much better bowlers at his disposal, like Ganguly had batsmen. And that emphasis on pace many times resulted in overemphasis. Given after all that, India's home dominance is crafted on the backs of Ash and Jadeja, I can name a many a match where they should had played together, only one did and India drew/lost what could they had won. As I said, he was inspirational, but took things to extreme sometimes. Ganguly was a better man manager. The only strong argument for Kohli in my mind is his win/loss ratio, but that again was due to having far superior bowlers. Overall, I will rank India's Top 5 Test captains as:
