- Tuesday, March 04, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Chetan Sharma, chief selector of the Indian men’s cricket team, has revealed details about an infamous episode of 2021 involving the then India captain Virat Kohli and former chief of the Indian cricket board, Sourav Ganguly, also a former captain.
In a sting operation conducted by a television channel, Sharma, 57, spoke on what happened behind the scenes that led to the alleged clash between the two towering personalities of Indian cricket.
Sharma, who was the chief selector back then and was reinstated recently after getting sacked last November after India lost the semi-final of the T20 World Cup, alleged that the relationship between Kohli and Ganguly saw “ego issues”.
He alleged that Kohli considered himself bigger than the board and tried to hit back at the then Board of Control for Cricket in India chief Ganguly as he felt that it was the latter who had removed him from the captaincy in the 50-over format.
“When the player becomes popular, he considers himself to be bigger than the board and thinks that nobody can touch him. He feels that cricket in India would stop without him. But has that ever happened? Some of our biggest cricket stars came and went, but cricket remained the same,” Sharma, a former India pacer, was heard saying during the sting operation.
“So, he (Kohli) tried to hit back at the (former) president at that time. It was a damaging controversy. It was a classic case of a player going against the BCCI. The president represents the BCCI, isn’t it? As to whose fault it was, that will be judged in time, but it was an attack on the BCCI. All our players are discouraged from doing this because the loss will be theirs as everyone will go against them, even if the president is at fault. There has to be some respect for the chair,” Sharma was heard adding.
Kohli had stepped down from the T20 captaincy after the 2021 T20 World Cup but then saw an unceremonious exit from the one-day international captaincy as well. He was replaced by Rohit Sharma as the captain in the white-ball formats.
As per Sharma, Kohli deliberately brought up the issue of him allegedly getting removed from the one-day captaincy in front of the press ahead of India’s tour of South Africa in December 2021-January 2022 since he believed that Ganguly had a role in it.
The official also accused Kohli of lying in front of the media about being removed from the one-day leadership without any communication only to defame Ganguly.
“Virat was going to South Africa as captain (of the Test side). Press conferences should be about team matters and not selections. There was no need to bring up this topic (Virat being removed from the ODI captaincy) during the press conference. But he did so intentionally. He felt that he had lost his ODI captaincy because of Ganguly. Ganguly had told reporters that he had asked him not to step down (as ODI captain), but Virat claimed before the media that the president never said this to him. This created a major controversy,” Sharma was heard as saying.
“Ganguly had told him once during a video conference to think it (stepping down as ODI skipper) over. But Virat did pay heed. There were nine people at the conference, including all the selectors. I am not sure if Virat heard Ganguly correctly. Ganguly later claimed that Virat lied to the media about him. As to why he did so, nobody knows. It is his personal matter. It sparked off a controversy, and matters escalated to the extent that it became an issue of a player against the Board,” Sharma said.
Kohli stepped down from Test captaincy in South Africa in January last year.
Sharma said Kohli was removed as the captain in the one-day internationals since the board did not want two captains for two white-ball formats but one each for the red-ball and white-ball format.
