Manoj Tiwary slams Virat Kohli and BCCI for creating unnecessary controversy over India captaincy

Kohli stepped down as T20I and Test skipper of Indian team and BCCI sacked him as ODI captain.

Manoj Tiwary, the current minister of state for the Affairs of Sports and Youth in West Bengal’s TMC government, has slammed both the BCCI and Virat Kohli for not having proper communication and letting the captaincy issue snowball into such a big controversy.

Virat Kohli had announced his stepping down as T20I captain before the T20 World Cup 2021. This led to the BCCI also sacking him as the ODI captain and giving the reins to Rohit Sharma in both white-ball formats.

BCCI President Sourav Ganguly had said that both he and chief BCCI selector Chetan Sharma had tried to convince Kohli to not step down as T20I captain.

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However, Kohli contradicted their statements, saying that neither Ganguly nor BCCI selectors contacted him about staying on as T20I skipper and he was told about his sacking as ODI captain just an hour and a half before the official announcement was made.

Now Manoj Tiwary has said that Kohli set the wrong example by announcing his decision to quit T20I captaincy before the T20 World Cup began. He said that it shifted the focus of the team from the tournament to the T20I captaincy.

"The T20 World Cup was our priority a few months back, but Virat announced his intention to relinquish the T20I captaincy just before the tournament. Now that’s not what you would expect from a captain as a fan. All your energy should’ve been focused on the T20 World Cup. However, once the focus shifted to the captaincy issue, the problem began to snowball into a bigger controversy that could’ve been avoided. The problem could’ve been resolved via a face-to-face meeting, which I think didn’t happen," Tiwary told Sportskeeda.

He also said that the whole fiasco could have been avoided if Virat Kohli and the BCCI officials had spoken to each other face-to-face. He said the entire thing shouldn’t have gone public like this.

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"It affects the team environment for sure. A healthy and good atmosphere is necessary to be in a good space, as a team and also as an individual. Everyone has seen that things haven’t been going well between the BCCI and Virat. It shouldn’t have happened in public.

There are mature people on both sides, so these things shouldn’t come out in public. As a sports fan, it has made me unhappy. What it does is it transfers the energy, whether good or bad, to others because whoever is close to one individual will subconsciously keep thinking about this controversy," he further said.  

Rohit Sharma is now primed to captain India in all three formats as BCCI grooms a young star to take over from him in future.