Virat Kohli stepped down from T20I Captaincy after 2021 T20I World Cup and few weeks later he was removed from the ODI captaincy also. In his place, Rohit Sharma was appointed as India’s limited over captain. After he removed from ODI Captaincy Virat Kohli said during press conference that he was not informed about removing from ODI captaincy. He also stepped down from Test Captaincy. At that time many believed Sourav Ganguly, then the BCCI President played the key role in Kohli’s removal. But now Sourav Ganguly cleared the air saying that he didn’t remove Virat Kohli from India’s Captaincy.
On a program called Dadagiri, Sourav Ganguly said, “I didn’t remove Virat from captaincy. I have said this several 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 formats. Let there be a white-ball captain and a red-ball captain.”
The ex-BCCI President also said, “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. No body from outside can contribute much.” “I was appointed as the President of BCCI to work for the betterment of Indian cricket, this is a small part of it.” Sourav continued.
After Rohit Sharma replacing Virat Kohli as India’s captain, India made it to the semi-finals of the ICC World Cup T20 in 2022. Team India contested the final of the ICC World Test Championship against Australia. India also won 10 matches in a row at the ICC World Cup 2023. Although the unbeaten run of India was ended by Australia in the final at Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad.