Former BCCI President Sourav Ganguly once again said that he didn’t pressure Virat Kohli to give up the captaincy, nor did he remove him from the leadership position. The manner in which Virat Kohli's captaincy tenure in the Indian team concluded raised many questions.
While the talismanic batter had decided to step down as India's T20 captain after T20 World Cup 2021, he was then removed as ODI captain. Not long later, Kohli stepped down as the team's Test captain as well in 2022.
Sourav Ganguly was at the helm of the BCCI as president when Virat Kohli resigned. Many reports claimed that he played a big role in Virat Kohli's removal. However, he has said now that he had no role to play in it.
"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 in leading in T20Is, it's better if you step down from entire white-ball cricket formats. Let there be a white-ball captain and a red-ball captain," Sourav Ganguly said on Dadagiri.
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Ganguly stated that Rohit was not interested in captaining the team in all three formats. He did, however, persuade the Mumbai batter to take up captaincy.
"I pushed Rohit Sharma a bit to take up the captaincy role because he wasn't interested in leading in all three formats of the game. So, maybe I have a bit of contribution in that but no matter who is administrating, it's the players who perform well on the field. Nobody from outside can contribute much. I was appointed as the President of BCCI to work for the betterment of Indian cricket, this is a small part of it,” Ganguly added.
Notably, India fared admirably in the just-finished ODI World Cup 2023, winning 10 consecutive games before falling to Australia in the final under Rohit's captaincy. Previously, India reached the semis of the T20 World Cup 2022 and won the Asia Cup 2023 tournament with Rohit as captain.
(NDTV inputs)
