If anything, the cricket establishment in India has an unhealthy respect for reputations. That having been said, some commentators have accused the Indian selection system as being arbitrary and prone to carrying out hatchet jobs on captains. Ganguly had been completely gratuitously trying to spin the story. If clarifications had to be made, the selection committee could have done the job. Kohli's position is unexceptionable, so Ganguly is the obvious culprit.įirst, there was no need for him to release a statement on the issue at all. Someone had to be found to carry the can for the controversy. In other words, the captaincy issue had been decided unilaterally.Ĭlearing up the issue of his availability for the ODIs, he clarified that he had not asked for a period of rest in January and was available for selection.Īs for playing under Sharma, he had said, 'I am tired of clarifying doubts on my relationship with Rohit.'Īfter the press conference, there were obviously numerous inquests into the affair in the media. He had been asked to join the meeting an hour-and-a-half before its commencement. He also said that no one had spoken to him about their 'vision' with regard to the limited formats of the game and, damningly, that he had been informed about the captaincy decision at a meeting of the selection committee at which the Test squad was being chosen. He said that when he had informed the BCCI about his decision to quit the T20 captaincy, it had been well received as a 'progressive step in the right direction' and he had not been told to retain the T20 captaincy. Kohli addressed a press conference at which he squarely contradicted Ganguly. The picture, however, changed on December 15, the day before the team left for South Africa. Photograph: Kind courtesy Virat Kohli/Instagram we explained the vision to him,' Ganguly had said. Ganguly also said that Chetan Sharma, chairman of the selection committee, and he himself had spoken to Kohli. He went on to claim that the board and the selectors had asked him to rethink his decision to step down, but Kohli had not been inclined to reconsider it. On December 9, Board of Control for Cricket in India (President Sourav Ganguly released a statement saying that Kohli's reluctance to lead the side in the T20 format had compelled the selectors to relieve him of his ODI captaincy. The underlying logic was that the same person should be captain in both the white-ball formats of the game. The team was slated to, and did, depart for South Africa on December 16, where they will first play three Tests under Kohli's captaincy and then three ODIs under Sharma.Īt the time of the announcement, the public was given to understand that the decision was made in consultation with Kohli and was prompted, at least in part, by his decision in September to relinquish the T20 captaincy. On December 8, the selection committee announced that Sharma would replace Kohli as captain of the ODI squad. Having put the decision itself in perspective, we can go on to the manner in which it was communicated - to Kohli in the main, but also to the public at large. That concentration is the big problem is evidenced by the fact that he gets the starts more often than not, but fails to convert them into epic knocks. We all know Kohli is in that bracket - he just needs to focus on his Test batting. In all this while, the three other top-drawer batsmen in international cricket - Australia's Steve Smith, England's Joe Root and New Zealand's Kane Williamson - have been piling on the runs in Test cricket. Photograph: Lee Warren/Gallo Images/Getty Images
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