Ever since India’s ousting from the T20 World Cup 2022, the talks of split captaincy have been doing the rounds. Many former cricketers and experts suggested that India should go the England way and appoint two different captains for red-ball and white-ball cricket. However, many opined that with the ODI World Cup around the corner, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) should stick with Rohit Sharma as the captain in ODIs but should hand over the T20I captaincy to someone else.
The Indian cricket board did exactly the same but without making any fuss about it. Rohit Sharma has been ‘resting’ in all the T20I series played after the T20 WC while Hardik Pandya has been leading the pack. The likes of KL Rahul and Virat Kohli have also been missing from the T20I squads. BCCI has been clever in handling the situation as the Indian cricket board and its officials have termed this as ‘workload management’.
Team India’s head coach Rahul Dravid has also maintained the narrative by denying all claims of India adopting split captaincy. Dravid smartly brushed aside the talks by saying that he is not aware of any such thing and the selectors are the right people to be queried about this.
"Not that I am aware of (India adopting split captaincy). That's a question you need to ask the selectors but as of now, I don't think so," Dravid said at the pre-match press conference ahead of the 3rd ODI between India and New Zealand.
The Indian head coach also addressed the questions about Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma’s absence from the T20I squads. Dravid clearly stated that the team management has decided to play these big names only in ODIs and Tests this year.
“There’s a certain priority we need to give to certain white-ball tournaments at particular stages of time. With the amount of cricket we are playing - the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and the World Test Championship - there are certain white-ball tournaments that we have to prioritise, the priority after the T20 World Cup has been these six (ODI) games,” Dravid said.
“As you've seen, Virat has played all these six games. He'll get a bit of a break along with Rohit and 1 or 2 other guys in the next week while we play some T20I cricket. And they come refreshed on the 2nd and we have a good week's camp before we play Australia. So yeah it's just priorities. We have to prioritise certain formats,” Dravid further explained.