At odds with popular belief, former India captain and BCCI president Sourav Ganguly has revealed that he was not personally responsible for the removal of Virat Kohli from the post of Indian men's cricket team captain. Kohli stepped down from the same role following India's poor display at the 2021 ICC T20I Cricket World Cup and later relinquished the same post for his domestic Indian Premier League team, Royal Challengers Bangalore. (Cricket News)
Ganguly, in a public appearance, distanced himself from the reports that his intervention caused Kohli to step away from captaincy for good, but insisted that he has always held the belief that such decision should cut acoss all white-ball formats, not just T20Is.
"I didn't remove Virat from captaincy," Ganguly revealed on reality show Dadagiri Unlimited Season 10.
"I have said this a lot of times. He wasn't 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."
Rohit Sharma assumed the post of the Indian national team captain in the aftermath of Kohli's departure. The Mumbai Indians batter has held the role across all three formats since, a scenario which, according to Ganguly, he was instrumental in developing.
"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 said.
"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. I was appointed as the president of BCCI to work for the betterment of Indian cricket, this is a small part of it."
India came close to winning their third ICC ODI World Cup under Sharma's captaincy, but to see their dream falter at the final hurdle against a mighty Australia side.
