New Delhi: Cricket is a sport but there is politics involved too. In an explosive press conference today, Virat Kohli exposed the political game going on behind the scenes in Indian cricket.
Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary on Wednesday (December 15) explained the possible reasons behind the sacking of Virat Kohli as ODI captain of India.
In the presser, Kohli said a lot of things that would not go down well with BCCI chief Sourav Ganguly.
Kohli said that he wanted to remain the captain of the team in the ODI format till the 2023 World Cup.
He revealed that he was told about the BCCI’s decision to sack him only 1.5 hours before the BCCI's Selection Committee meeting on December 8.
He also said that he never said that he would not be available for the South Africa tour. He said that these were just rumours and that he had even told BCCI about it.
Further, Kohli rubbished all the reports of differences with Rohit Sharma and said that he is tired of giving clarification on this.
On 16 September 2021, a month before the T20 World Cup, Kohli had surprised everyone by announcing that he would leave the captaincy in the T-20 format after the tournament. In the T20 World Cup, India lost to Pakistan and the team could not even reach the semi-finals.
On 9 November, Rohit Sharma became the captain of the T20 team. And on 8 December, he was also made the captain of the ODI team. However, this time Kohli did not give up the captaincy on his own. Rather, this time the captaincy was snatched from him.
As far as Ganguly is concerned, he reasoned that there cannot be two different captains in the white-ball format and hence the decision has been taken.
After Sourav Ganguly became BCCI president, Kohli’s influence in the team had weakened. He was reminded that he has not won a single ICC tournament as captain. He was told that he will have to prove himself by winning the T20 World Cup. But Kohli could not do this and his hold on the captaincy became weak.
Whatever be the actual reason, one thing is clear, that is, all is not well in the Indian cricket camp and that there are major altercations between Kohli and the BCCI.
