Sourav Ganguly Addresses Virat Kohli Captaincy Speculation

Sourav Ganguly Addresses Virat Kohli Captaincy Speculation, Putting an End to the Saga

Speaking first about the controversy surrounding Virat Kohli's captaincy, former BCCI president Sourav Ganguly stated that he encouraged Rohit Sharma to take the helm.

In 2021, after publicly declaring his intention to resign as Team India’s captain in the shortest format, Virat Kohli dropped a bombshell about his captaincy. Former board president Sourav Ganguly stated that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) asked Kohli to stay on as India’s T20I captain at the time, but the former captain of India only wanted to lead the Men In Blue in Test and ODI formats.

Interestingly, Kohli ended up giving up leadership roles across formats before the end of the 2022 season. Appointed as white-ball captain in December 2022, veteran opener Rohit Sharma succeeded Kohli as India’s full-time Test captain after the latter stepped down from the position following the South Africa series. Kohli had announced that he would step down as the T20I captain of the 2007 champions in order to manage his workload.

The Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 season featured a number of reports that suggested there was an ugly rift between the two icons of the game, Virat Kohli and Virat Kohli. The exchanges between the former captain of Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) and the director of cricket at Delhi Capitals (DC) made headlines throughout the entire IPL 2023 season. Did Ganguly have any role in displacing Kohli from the captaincy throne?

“I did not remove Virat from captaincy. I have said this a lot of times. He was not interested to lead in T20Is. So, after he made that decision, I told him, if you are not interested to lead in T20Is, it is better if you step down from entire white-ball cricket. Let there be a white-ball captain and a red-ball captain,” Ganguly said, expressing his thoughts about the India captaincy saga on Dadagiri Unlimited Season 10.

“I pushed Rohit Sharma to take up the captaincy role because he was not interested to lead in all three formats of the game. So, maybe I have a bit of contribution in that, but no matter who is administrating, it is the players who perform well on the field.

I was appointed as the President of BCCI to work for the betterment of Indian cricket, this is a small part of it,” the former captain of India declared. Nevertheless, he insisted that he supported Rohit to lead Team India following Kohli’s departure.

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