Recently, Sourav Ganguly made it clear that, in his capacity as President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, he did not remove Virat Kohli from the captaincy of his country (BCCI). Notably, Kohli gave up his T20I captaincy following India’s 2021 T20 World Cup group-stage elimination, but he had stated that he wanted to keep captaining the squad for ODIs and Tests.
But it appears that he lost his ODI captaincy as well. In January 2022, Kohli proceeded to declare that he would give up his Test leadership. Following the incident, Ganguly, the president of the BCCI at the time, faced intense criticism on social media since many people thought he was involved in Kohli’s choice. After that, Rohit Sharma was named India’s captain for all three forms.
A video featuring the “Prince of Bengal” being credited with removing Kohli from his position as India’s captain and selecting Rohit in his place was played on a recent show that Ganguly himself hosted. In response to the video, the former captain of India stated that just a portion of it was true. According to Ganguly, Kohli expressed his desire to retain his T20I captaincy, and he simply advised the player that having different captains for Tests and short overs is a more practical option.
He made it clear that he was not involved in Kohli’s firing.
I did not dethrone Virat as captain. I’ve mentioned this numerous times. In T20Is, he had no interest in taking the lead. After he made that decision, I advised him to give up playing white-ball cricket altogether if he had no desire to lead in Twenty20 internationals. On the reality show Dadagiri Unlimited Season 10, Ganguly declared, “Let there be a white-ball captain and a red-ball captain.”
According to the 51-year-old, Rohit has no interest in becoming captain of any of the three versions. Still, he was able to persuade the Mumbai batter. Notably, India under Rohit Sharma had an incredible run of 10 consecutive victories in the just ended ODI World Cup 2023 before falling to Australia in the final. Ganguly praised the players rather than taking credit for India’s performances.
“As Rohit Sharma wasn’t interested in leading in all three of the game’s formats, I gently prodded him to assume the captaincy role. So, perhaps I can help there a little, but the players are the ones who excel on the field, regardless of the administrator. This is only a small portion of the task I was asked to do as President of the BCCI to improve Indian cricket,” he continued.
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