Amidst furore around Virat Kohli’s controversial sacking as ODI captain, BCCI president Sourav Ganguly has explained the rationale behind the move and the appointment of Rohit Sharma as the new 50-over India captain.
The BCCI contentiously held no press conference and offered no official explanation in its statement issued on December 8, containing the Test squad picked for the tour of South Africa. Beneath it was a column where the news was broken that Rohit, who became India’s new T20I skipper after Kohli’s decision to quit after the T20 World Cup, will also be the team’s ODI captain “going forward”.
This led to a massive uproar over social media where fans called out the BCCI for showing no transparency on the matter and providing no communication about the back and forth that would have happened related to the move. It is still not confirmed whether Kohli was privy to those discussions and whether he agreed to the decision.
But Ganguly has now tried to clear the air in this regard, stating that once Kohli decided to relinquish the T20I captaincy, the selectors and the BCCI apex council were in agreement that there should be only one white-ball captain, which led to Rohit’s appointment in ODIs as well.
“It’s a call that the BCCI and the selectors took together. Actually, the BCCI had requested Virat to not step down as the T20I skipper but obviously, he did not agree. And the selectors then did not feel it right to have two different captains for two white-ball formats,”
Ganguly told ANI.
While there have been speculations of BCCI under Ganguly’s watch trying to cut Kohli’s wings for a while, the former India captain said that he and his team, as well as the selectors, had a conversation with Kohli before the move to change the ODI captain was arrived at.
“So it was decided that Virat will continue as Test captain and Rohit will take over as the white-ball captain. I as President personally spoke to Virat Kohli and the chairman of selectors has also spoken to him,”
he added.
Ganguly also wished the new skipper Rohit well, with only two years left until the 2023 World Cup in India, and thanked Kohli for his contribution to the side. Kohli, who was groomed as the next captain during MS Dhoni’s mighty successful tenure, became the full-time skipper himself at the start of January 2017.
Under his captaincy, India played 95 ODIs and won 65, losing only 27. The team reached the finals of the 2017 Champions Trophy and the semi-final of the 2019 ODI World Cup in England. In these games, Kohli led India from the front, scoring a whopping 5,449 runs at an average of 72.65 and strike-rate of 98.28, including 21 centuries and 27 half-centuries.
Despite Ganguly’s explanation, there is much left to be desired as far as transparency and communication are concerned from the BCCI. What also doesn’t help the frustration of the fans are the number of media reports that they’ve frequently been coming around, with “sources” throwing up various versions of potential inside dressing room news.
It’s clear that somebody from the board is leaking these important developments to the media and giving the external forces the strength they previously enjoyed only when Ganguly was the captain himself.
Amidst all the controversy, though, India’s biggest strength is their team quality, resources and the presence of Kohli, Rohit as senior men with great experience, and head coach Rahul Dravid, whose man-management skills and maturity aren’t up for debate.
