BCCI Rushed Into Sacking Virat Kohli As ODI Captain; Reports Suggest He Was Mulling To Quit On His Own

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) President Sourav Ganguly recently clarified the selectors’ decision to remove Virat Kohli from the ODI captaincy of the Indian team and instil Rohit Sharma as the captain in both white-ball formats, while keeping the Test captaincy with Kohli.

On December 8, the day when the BCCI named an 18-member squad for the upcoming three-Test series against South Africa, they also announced the decision of appointing Rohit Sharma India’s ODI captain “going forward”.

This raised many eyebrows as Kohli while stepping down as T20I captain, had made it clear that he wanted to focus on captaining the Indian team in Tests and ODIs. However, Ganguly confirmed that Kohli had declined the board’s request to not step down as the T20I skipper, and the selection committee felt that it wasn’t possible to have two players captaining in the two limited-overs formats.

Unconfirmed reports stated that Virat Kohli was given 48 hours to announce that he was quitting as ODI captain himself. And not hearing back from him meant BCCI decided to go ahead anyway.

Virat Kohli Was Evidently Sacked- Reports

As on December 10, two days after the BCCI made the announcement official, a Cricbuzz Plus report claims, Kohli was “evidently sacked”. It was further learnt that Kohli was positively mulling to step down too, but even before he could have made the announcement, the BCCI jumped the gun and axed him from the ODI captaincy post.

The reports reveal further that the selectors had met on December 8, first with Kohli along with them virtually, to pick the South Africa Test squad, and later in his absence, with the latter meeting materializing into his sacking.

“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 Cricbuzz Plus report claims.

Reports also said that Kohli also conformed to Rohit Sharma becoming the new Test vice-captain replacing out-of-form Ajinkya Rahane.

“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.

Also Read: Madan Lal Expresses Disappointment At Virat Kohli’s Sacking As ODI Skipper