The BCCI Sourav Ganguly president has called for time for his apex council to “deal with” the issue that has led to a massive controversy in Indian cricket.
He also confirmed that the board will not be doing any follow press conference or leave any statement in this regard.
“No statement, no press conference. We will deal with it. Leave it to BCCI,”
Ganguly told reporters after Kohli’s comments that he had no “prior communication” with Ganguly or BCCI regarding his ODI captaincy removal led to a massive uproar and raised a question mark on the level of transparency with which the former India captain’s board regime is operating.
Soon after Kohli’s ODI sacking created a major bone of contention for the fans, who criticised Ganguly and BCCI heavily for Indian great’s unceremonious removal, Ganguly came out and said that he had urged Kohli to not give up the T20I captaincy.
But once the Indian captain’s decision was final in the shortest format, Ganguly confirmed, the BCCI, in cohesion with the selectors, felt it wouldn’t be right to have different captains for ODIs and T20Is. Thus, the board announced Rohit Sharma as new white-ball captain “going forward”.
“We had requested Virat not to step down as T20 captain but he didn’t want to continue as captain. So, the selectors felt that they cannot have two white-ball captains in two white-ball formats. That’s too much of leadership,”
Ganguly told PTI.
However, Kohli contradicted this statement from Ganguly during his customary pre-tour presser before leaving for South Africa on December 15.
Speaking to the media, Kohli revealed that he was told about the captaincy change in ODI only an hour and half before the selection for the Tests in South Africa was made. The skipper said there was “no prior communication to me at all” from the time he gave up the T20I captaincy.
“I was contacted one-and-a-half hours before the selection meeting on December 8 for the Test series. There was no prior communication to me at all from when I announced the T20I captaincy decision until the eighth (of December) where, as I said, I got a call one-and-a-half hours before the selection meeting,”
Kohli said, as quoted by ESPNcricinfo.
“The chief selector [Chetan Sharma] discussed with me the Test team to which we both agreed, and before ending the call I was told that the five selectors have decided that I will not be the ODI captain, to which I replied, ‘okay, fine’.
And in the selection call afterwards, we chatted about it briefly. And that’s what happened. There was no communication prior to that at all.”
Virat’s comments and trace of the events leading up to his captaincy removal are in sharp contrast to Ganguly’s version of the story. While the former India captain suggested he asked Kohli to reconsider the call, the man said there was no such communication with the BCCI or the national selectors.
In the end, his successful tenure as ODI captain is ending two years before the next ODI World Cup at home in India. He led the country in a total of 95 ODIs, including the final of the 2017 Champions Trophy and semi-final of the 2019 World Cup.
India won 68 and lost 27 games of these, with their skipper leading from the front. Kohli has a marvellous record as captain-batter in ODIs, scoring a whopping 5,449 runs at 72.65 with a strike-rate of 98.28.
