Despite Sourav Ganguly’s clarification regarding the ODI captaincy transfer from Virat Kohli to Rohit Sharma, the handling of the matter has revealed that transition was not smooth.
On December 8, the selection committee announced the decision of going ahead with Rohit Sharma in the ODIs. The call was not taken lightly as Virat had expressed his desire to lead the ODI and Test teams after leaving the T20I captaincy.
However, Ganguly confirmed that Kohli had declined the board’s request to not step down from his leadership role in the shortest format of the game and the selectors felt that it was sensible to have one person leading the both white-ball teams.
It has now emerged that Virat was mulling to leave ODI captaincy but before he could announce his decision, the wise men of Indian cricket sacked him.
“Those in his close circles had told Cricbuzz multiple times that he was considering issuing a statement over the ODI captaincy. “Something should be coming soon,” a source close to him had said when approached about his plans recently.”
The report further reveals that Virat was present in one of the meetings to pick the Test squad, and later in his absence, the selectors took a call on his removal in another meeting.
“Formally, the selectors first met to pick the Test squad in which Kohli was present, virtually, of course. The team had been read out to him and he did not raise any objections. On one occasion before, Kohli had come on strong, much to the surprise of the new selection committee, over the omission of Shikhar Dhawan from the ODI squad, in March. But since then, the relationship had seemed to be on the mend with multiple selection meetings taking place without much drama, right until the latest one,” the report claims.
“There had been no objections even when the selectors had made one significant change – elevating Rohit to the Test vice-captaincy in place of Ajinkya Rahane in the meeting where Ganguly and Shah were also present. A little while after that meeting was dissolved, the selectors met again and this time the chairman proposed the change of ODI captain, and the pitch was unanimously approved by four other selectors. Ganguly and Shah were not present this time around,” it added.