- Tuesday, February 25, 2025
All hell broke loose in Indian cricket over Kohli’s 50-over captaincy with many accusing Ganguly of playing a role in the ace batter’s ouster.
By: Shubham Ghosh
HE has been one of India’s most successful captains. But the era of skipper Virat Kohli did not end on a happy note after he was allegedly removed from the post in the 50-over format in 2021 following his decision to quit the T20 captaincy after the World Cup in the shortest format held in Dubai the same year.
In January 2022, Kohli stepped down from Test captaincy too, in South Africa.
All hell broke loose in Indian cricket over Kohli’s 50-over captaincy with many accusing Sourav Ganguly, a former India captain and the then chief of the country’s cricket board, of playing a role in the ace batter’s ouster. It was also reported that the two individuals did not see eye to eye after that episode for a while, including during the Indian Premier League (IPL) this year. However, they were seen shaking hands during the same tournament later. While Kohli plays for the Royal Challengers Bangalore in IPL, Ganguly is the director of cricket for Delhi Capitals.
Recently, Ganguly said he had no role in the removal of Kohli from the top spot.
In a Bengali television reality quiz show that he anchors, the former India captain said that he didn’t remove Kohli from captaincy and he told it many times.
“He (Kohli) was not interested to lead in T20Is. So, after he made that decision, I told him, if you’re not interested to lead in T20Is, it’s better if you step down from entire white-ball cricket formats. Let there be a white-ball captain and a red-ball captain,” the 51-year-old said.
“I pushed Rohit Sharma a bit to take up the captaincy role because he wasn’t 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’s the players who perform well on the field. No body from outside can contribute much.
“I was appointed as the president of BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) to work for the betterment of Indian cricket, this is a small part of it.”
Ganguly’s own stint as the BCCI chief also came to an end in 2022 end after he served for three years.
Sharma took up as the captain in all three formats after Kohli’s exit and he led the side to knockouts in all of them but failed to win the crown in any.
Kohli had taken over as the India captain in 2015 from the legendary Mahendra Singh Dhoni and is the most successful captain in Tests for the country, leading it to 40 victories in 68 matches.
