Mumbai, Dec 10: Irrespective of India’s performance at the T20 World Cup, ViratKohli would have stayed as white-ball captain if he wouldn’t have relinquished T20I captaincy. Once Kohli quit captaincy in the shortest format, the selectors decided to completely separate red-ball and white-ball leaderships to avoid confusion. “We (BCCI) had requested Virat not to step down as T20I captain.
There was no plan to change captaincy. But he stepped down as T20I captain and the selectors decided not to split limited-overs captaincy, opting for a complete separation,” Ganguly told The Indian Express. There’s a school of thought that the failure to win an ICC event had put Kohli’s limited-overs captaincy under pressure and the result at the T20 World Cup could have had a bearing.
However, it is understood that the selectors would have retained Kohli as captain in all formats.
Ganguly spoke about the team’s good performance across formats under Kohli’s charge, although not winning an ICC event remained the only missing piece. In fact, to help Kohli, the BCCI brought in MS Dhoni as the team mentor for the T20 World Cup, a decision that was “completely accepted” by India’s former white-ball skipper.
India crashed out of the T20 World Cup in the group phase, but it wouldn’t have jeopardised Kohli’s position. But as the latter refused to continue as T20I captain, the selectors had to appoint Rohit Sharma for all limited-overs cricket. “The bottom line is that there can’t be two white-ball captains,” said the former India captain.Indian cricket is usually not used to different captains in different formats, something which is prevalent in England and Australia.
Asked if split captaincy and two power centres in the team can create problems going ahead, Ganguly replied in the negative. India had split captaincy before, for two years, when Kohli captained the Test team and Dhoni led in limited-overs cricket. The BCCI chief spoke about communicating with Kohli about the ODI captaincy change. “I spoke to him. Chief selector spoke to him,” said the Board chief, while wishing Rohit all the best and expecting that he would do a good job. Three months ago, while relinquishing T20I captaincy, Kohli had expressed his desire to lead India in Tests and ODIs, going ahead.
