Sourav Ganguly spills beans on Virat Kohli’s decision to step down as India’s captain

The cricketing universe was in shock when the modern-day great cricketer Virat Kohli decided to step down as India’s captain across all formats of the game in 2021. The reason behind Kohli’s shocking decision is still unknown, however, there were some rumours and speculations that former Indian Cricket Board president Sourav Ganguly was the reason behind it.

Meanwhile, Ganguly has now opened up on the matter and clarified that he didn’t remove Kohli from the captaincy. He said that Kohli decided to quit captaincy from the T20I format after the heartbreaking group stage exit during the T20I World Cup 2021 but desired to remain the skipper in the ODI and Test format.

“I didn’t remove Virat from captaincy. I have told this a lot of times. He was not 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,” Ganguly was quoted as saying by Times Now.

I pushed Rohit Sharma a bit to take up the captaincy role: Sourav Ganguly

Ganguly also revealed that the current captain Rohit Sharma wasn’t initially interested in leading the Indian team, however, somehow he convinced him to take the captaincy role in all 3 formats. Interestingly, his decision proved right as Rohit displayed his brilliant captaincy skills in the recently concluded ODI World Cup 2023 by leading the team into the finals while being unbeaten. However, Rohit & Co. couldn’t win the final clash against Australia.

“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. 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 the Indian Cricket Board to work for the betterment of Indian cricket, this is a small part of it,”