[MENTION=138463]Slog[/MENTION]
I am afraid the only mental gymnastics are by the people who want to assist that a captain with a Mickey Mouse tally of 14 Test wins (only 3 outside Asia) is the greatest captain ever produced by Asia. If that is indeed true, that standard of cricket in Asia must be excruciatingly low.
As far as the Sri Lankan draws are concerned, Imran fans tell us that drawing matches was common in that era, which is the excuse they use to justify his Mickey Mouse tally of 14 Test wins and only 3 outside Asia.
The fact is that Sri Lanka only won 2 Test matches in the entire decade. There must be a reason why they were not good enough to win against any team minus a terribly mediocre India and the so-called GOAT Asian team led by the Mighty Khan.
Excluding Sri Lanka, India and Australia were the weakest sides of the 80s. Both of them had a W/L ratio of 0.6, while the Sri Lankan team had a W/L ratio of 0.1.
They were, by far, the weakest Test team of the decade and it is futile to overrate them in order to excuse the embarrassing defeat Imran suffered. No amount of excuses, justification, revisionism and overrating of the SL team would change the fact that it is a black stain on the captaincy record of the so-called GOAT Asian captain.
Imran did well not to lose a series to WI in the 1980s and win two matches against weakened WI sides - a monumental achievement, but that alone is not a big enough achievement to negate everything else. You cannot judge a team, player or captain only by how they performed against the best team of the era.
If use that logic to deduce that Kapil was a better Test batsman than Imran because he scored a hundred in West Indies in the 1980s and Imran couldnt cross 50, his fans will get upset as usual.
The bottom-line is that Kohli has already surpassed Imran as a Test captain. He no longer deserves to be compared with a captain who won a grand total of 14 Test matches (3 outside Asia) and lost to the weakest team of his era.
Unfortunately, Imran is a father figure for Pakistan cricket and our fans have a special emotional connection with him. Thus, they will not argue with facts but only with rhetoric. Even if Kohli whitewashes every single team away from home, they would still not consider him as a better Test captain because of so and so and so reasons, but these so and so and so reasons do not make up for the fact that Kohli has 33 Test wins already, while Imran would have to live three lives to better that record.
Every captain has some blemish in their record.
It is pretty silly to compare a captain just based on number of wins. Steve Waugh had an unbelievable number of victories yet nobody would consider him a better captain to Mark Taylor who had far less victories. You judge a captain based on how he improves what was before him and how he fares against difficult challenges. On that measure, Imran is better than Kohli.
Here are Imran's major achievements:
- Remaining unbeaten strong home record
- Winning in England for the first time
- Winning in India for the first time
- Being unbeaten against the best team of the era, WI in three series
The above level of success was unprecedented in Pakistan's cricket history till that point. No previous Pakistani captain since Kardar could dream of such results. Even when Imran lost in England and Australia they were hard fought series with the hosts having the clear advantage.
But judging a captaincy is more than just numbers. Imran actually built a world-beating team, groomed players like Inzi, Waqar and Wasim, and got a team that was historically difficult to work together.
Kohli is clearly an aggressive and dynamic captain but has India really progressed under his captaincy compared to earlier? Kohli has made India unbeatable at home which is a good achievement (though India pretty much only loses a home series once a decade so its not that huge a deal) and won a series against a weakened Australia away which also goes to his credit. But he lost away to NZ, SA and England which were all beatable teams. On top of that, in ODIs/T20s he has failed to bring home any trophy. His results are basically a mixed bag similar to worse to what they were under Dhoni.
But Dhoni had to deal with aging stars and newcomers when he started losing 2011-2015 while Kohli was basically handed a ready-made team. India was supposed to have the better team on paper so why did they underperform away?
Again, context is everything. Kohli, in terms of administration, support, team selection, resources, has everything working in his favor yet has not taken India to the next level. On that score, Imran > Kohli. Maybe Ganguly would be a better comparison.