Dilip Vengsarkar Blasts BCCI Selectors For Not Grooming A Captaincy Successor For Virat Kohli

Former India captain Dilip Vengsarkar has come down heavily on the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) selection panel for their lack of vision in grooming a successor for captaincy after Virat Kohli. This comes after Kohli ended his 7-year captaincy stint of the Indian team on January 16, 2022.

Kohli, in an emotional social media post, announced that he was stepping down as the captain of the Indian Test team effective immediately. The Delhi-born batter had already quit the T20I captaincy after the T20 World Cup 2021, where India failed to reach the playoffs and lost to Pakistan for the first time in World Cup history.

However, he had expressed a desire to remain captain in the ODI and Test format with a vision to lead the team in the 2023 World Cup. However, the BCCI selectors sacked him as ODI captain, replacing him as Rohit Sharma, who had been named the T20I captain already, and cited that two white-ball captains are not possible for the Indian team.

Meanwhile, India’s heartbreaking 1-2 Test series loss against a relatively inexperienced South African team was the nail in the coffin of Kohli’s captaincy, who was also experiencing a change in the backroom staff.

Like We Groomed MS Dhoni, They Just Haven’t Identified The Right Man To Replace Virat Kohli As A Captain: Dilip Vengsarkar  

Former India cricketer Dilip Vengsarkar has blamed the selectors for not grooming a captain for the future. It is expected that either of Rohit Sharma or KL Rahul will take over as captain in the red-ball format, while many are speculating on Ravichandran Ashwin as a stop-gap arrangement or even Rishabh Pant, who can be groomed for the future.

Vengsarkar feels that the selectors failed to identify the right player to replace Kohli as captain and they lacked a vision of it.

“It has been caused over the years by the selectors’ lack of vision in grooming a captain for the future. Like we groomed Dhoni, they just haven’t identified the right man to replace Kohli as a captain. I just couldn’t understand why Shikhar Dhawan was named as the captain of India’s tour of Sri Lanka last year,” Vengsarkar told Times of India.’

Vengsarkar was the chairman of selectors when Rahul Dravid stepped down from captaincy in 2007 and they gave the leadership to Anil Kumble in Tests as a stop-gap arrangement, until MS Dhoni was ready to take over, which he did at home in 2008.

“We wanted to give some more time to Dhoni before he took the Test captaincy. He was already the white-ball captain, and we wanted him to learn a few things by following Kumble closely. Kumble led India superbly in that period,” he recalled.

Virat Kohli won 40 Tests out of 68 he captained for India, making him the most successful Indian Test captain and fourth overall behind Graeme Smith, Ricky Ponting, and Steve Waugh.

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