Picture Credit: X
Former India cricketer and BCCI President Sourav Ganguly has been out from the cricketing arena off late after the conclusion of IPL 2023, where he was at the helm as the Director of Cricket with Delhi Capitals. However, he has been in news several time over his decision to remove Virat Kohli as the captain of Team India, the former cricketer has now broken his silence.
In a reality show ‘Dadagiri Unlimited Season 10’, Ganguly, who is the host clarified that he did not remove Kohli from captaincy after India’s heartbreaking exit from the T20 World Cup 2021, but just suggested him to step down from white-ball captaincy. “I didn’t remove Virat from captaincy. I have said this several 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. Let there be a white-ball captain and a red-ball captain,” he said.
The 51-year-old further added that Rohit Sharma was also not ready to take the captaincy role in Tests but Ganguly somehow managed to convince him. “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,” Ganguly added.
Talking about the two key players, both Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have taken a break from limited-overs format and will be joining the team in South Africa for the two-match Test series. However, in his time off the cricketing field, Virat Kohli is currently in London with his family and will be joining the team later.
India’s squad for South Africa Test series:
Rohit Sharma (C), Shubman Gill, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ishan Kishan (wk), KL Rahul (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Mohd. Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Mohd. Shami, Jasprit Bumrah (vc), Prasidh Krishna.
