Former Indian skipper, Dilip Vengsarkar has come hard on the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and its president Sourav Ganguly for the way they sacked Virat Kohli as the ODI captain earlier this month. Rohit Sharma has been appointed as the replacement of Kohli as the ODI captain. However, in the press conference, before leaving for South Africa, Kohli made some contradictory claims as that of BCCI and its officials.
Virat Kohli clearly mentioned that he didn’t get a call from anybody from the board asking him to continue as the T20I skipper and also claimed that he was informed of his removal from the ODI job in less than a couple of hours before the squad for the South Africa series was announced.
Dilip Vengsarkar said the entire episode was “unfortunate” and criticized Ganguly for “speaking on behalf of the selectors” on why they wanted to fire Kohli. During a chat with Khaleej Times, he said, ” I think it should have been handled more professionally by the cricket board.”
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He further added, “The thing is that Ganguly had no business to speak on behalf of the selection committee. Ganguly is the president of BCCI. Any issue about selection or captaincy, it’s the chairman of the selection committee who should speak.”
The former India chief selector also felt that BCCI’s unprofessionalism could’ve led Kohli being agonized.
Elaborating the same Dilip Vengsarkar said, “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. Kohli, you have to respect him, he has done so much for the country, so much for Indian cricket. But how they dealt with him, it must have definitely hurt him.”
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Virat Kohli will be leading the Test squad in the upcoming 3-match series in South Africa from December 26 while Rohit, who was ruled out of the Test series due to a hamstring injury, will join the team next month and captain the ODI side from January 19, if he’s fit.
