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BCCI President Sourav Ganguly has opened up about Team India having seven different captains in 2022 so far. He feels that no one was at fault and believes so many players have received leadership opportunities due to unavoidable circumstances like injuries and the Covid-19 infections.
Sourav Ganguly said, “I fully agree that it is not ideal to have seven different captains in such a short span of time but it has happened because of unavoidable situation. Like Rohit was all set to lead in South Africa in white-ball but before the tour, got injured. So we had KL (Rahul) leading in ODIs and then for this recent SA home series, KL got injured one day before the series would start.”
The BCCI President also feels for the head coach Rahul Dravid, as he has to work with so many different captains in his short stint so far. “In England, Rohit was playing the warm-up game when he had COVID-19. No one is at fault for these situations. The calendar is such that we have had to give players breaks and then there have been injuries and we need to factor in workload management also. You got to feel for head coach Rahul (Dravid) as in every series, due to unavoidable circumstances, we have had new captains,” he added.
Recently, BCCI announced the squad for their West Indies tour and has added another captain to the list as Shikhar Dhawan will lead the team in the three-match ODI series. Ravindra Jadeja will be the vice-captain in a 16-member squad where stars like Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya, Mohammed Shami as well as the injured KL Rahul have been left out.
India will travel to West Indies and the USA as the ODI series in Trinidad starts on 22 July. They are then scheduled to play five T20Is in Trinidad, St Kitts and Lauderhill (Florida) with the tour concluding with the two T20Is in the USA on 6 and 7 August.
Squad: Shikhar Dhawan (C), Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shubman Gill, Deepak Hooda, Suryakumar Yadav, Shreyas Iyer, Ishan Kishan (wk), Sanju Samson (wk), Ravindra Jadeja (VC), Shardul Thakur, Yuzvendra Chahal, Axar Patel, Avesh Khan, Prasidh Krishna, Mohammed Siraj, Arshdeep Singh