Former India cricketer and Chairman of selectors, Dilip Vengsarkar lashed out at the BCCI and its president, Sourav Ganguly for sacking Virat Kohli from ODI captaincy earlier this month.
Rohit Sharma was named limited-overs captain and Kohli was removed effectively from the post after which he gave a sensational press conference in which he put allegations on the BCCI.
On one hand, BCCI claimed that they had asked Kohli to not give up T20I captaincy and had also contacted him 48 hours prior and asked him to step down as ODI captain.
But Kohli contradicted all of their claims and said that no one from the Board called him to continue his T20I captaincy and he was contacted only two hours before the selection of the Test team for South Africa and told that he has been removed from ODI captaincy.
Vengsarkar’s thoughts on the whole issue
According to Vengsarkar, the whole incident was “unfortunate” and lashed out at Ganguly and said that the latter had no right to “speak on behalf of the selectors” as to why Kohli was fired.
It’s very unfortunate, the whole thing. I think it should have been handled more professionally by the cricket board.
He further added,
The thing is that Ganguly had no business to speak on behalf of the selection committee. Ganguly is the president of the BCCI. Any issue about selection or captaincy, it’s the chairman of the selection committee who should speak.
Vengsarkar also felt that Kohli might have felt bad about the BCCI’s decision to remove him from ODI captaincy.
Ganguly spoke about the whole thing, obviously Virat wanted to make his case clear. I believe it should have been between the chairman of the selection committee and the captain. A captain is selected or removed by the selection committee, that’s not Ganguly’s jurisdiction at all.
Adding further, he said,
Yes, things should change now. Kohli, you have to respect him, he has done so much for the country, so much for Indian cricket. But how you have dealt with him, it must have definitely hurt him.
India is all set to lock horns with South Africa on the 26th of December in the first test. Rohit Sharma has been ruled out of the series with a hamstring injury.
He will be captaining India next month in the ODI series if he is fit.
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