Former Indian captain and chief selector Dilip Vengsarkar lashed out at the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and President Sourav Ganguly for the way they sacked Virat Kohli from the ODI captaincy earlier this month, saying they should have respected the skipper.
After Rohit Sharma was appointed as India's ODI captain, Ganguly stated that the Indian selectors didn’t want different captains for the white-ball format and that’s why they removed Kohli from the role.
The BCCI President also claimed that he had asked Kohli to continue as T20I captain.
But, earlier this month, Kohli made some sensational revelations in a presser, saying that he didn't get a call from anybody from the BCCI to continue as the T20I captain and that he was informed of his removal from the ODI captaincy less than two hours before the Test squad selection for the South Africa tour.
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In describing the ugly episode between the BCCI and Kohli as "unfortunate," Vengsarkar questioned the lack of professionalism from the world’s most powerful cricket board in handling the issue and slammed the BCCI President for adding fuel to the fire by "speaking on behalf of the selectors."
Vengsarkar told the Khaleej Times: “It’s very unfortunate, the whole thing. I think it should have been handled more professionally by the cricket board. The thing is that Ganguly had no business to speak on behalf of the selection committee. Ganguly is the president of BCCI. Any issue about selection or captaincy, it’s the chairman of the selection committee who should speak.”
He continued, “Ganguly spoke about the whole thing, obviously Virat wanted to make his case clear. I believe it should have been between the chairman of the selection committee and the captain. A captain is selected or removed by the selection committee, that’s not Ganguly’s jurisdiction at all.”
The former skipper also believes that Kohli would have been hurt by the way the BCCI dealt with the whole situation. He signed off by saying, “Yes, things should change now. Kohli, you have to respect him, he has done so much for the country, so much for Indian cricket. But how they dealt with him, it must have definitely hurt him.”
