Why Virat Kohli Removed from Captaincy: Post the unsuccessful T20 World Cup 2021 campaign Virat Kohli has stepped down from the T20I captaincy role. Notably, Virat announces that he will not lead RCB in IPL 2022 when the UAE leg of IPL 2021 kickstarted.
Under this circumstance, BCCI announced Rohit Sharma as the ODI skipper for the upcoming South Africa tour.
Though Virat Kohli remains as one of the best white-ball captains for India he fails to add an ICC trophy to the shelves. As a preparatory movement for the upcoming back-to-back ICC events BCCI might take this decision.
Arguably Virat Kohli is the run machine for team India and proved this on many occasions. Highlighting this cricket experts believe that in order to bring back the aggressive form BCCI might relieve him from the white ball captaincy duties.
Why Virat Kohli Removed from Captaincy Role
Venkatapathy Raju, the former India spinner, who was part of the board’s selection panel, believes now that Kohli has been relieved of his captaincy duties in limited-overs cricket, it could well signal the revival of his free-flowing best.
“Of late, the match-winner in Kohli was missing. So, this may be an attempt to find the match-winner in him again. And Rohit has led India with distinction whenever he has been given the opportunity. Probably, he will play more freely now,” Raju told Mid-Day.
Although Kohli has been scoring half-centuries, the star India batter has not scored a century since November of 2019, making it a total of 57 innings across formats that he has not registered a three-digit score.
Notably, Virat Kohli’s childhood coach Rajkumar Sharma expressed his displeasure over BCCI’s decision of stripping Virat Kohli from the ODI captaincy role.
MSK Prasad Answers
MSK Prasad, another former chairman of selectors, feels that the decision to appoint Rohit makes sense given the very few ODIs the Indian cricket team has lined up over the next year, en route to the T20 World Cup, where India would be keen to brush aside the disappointing show of this year’s World Cup.
“More than the feeling of sacking, I think this was the more logical thought. We are playing only seven or eight ODI games in the next season. So, probably, the selectors would have felt that one captain for both formats [would be better] because T20 and 50-over players are almost similar barring a few here and there,” Prasad told Mid-Day.
“So, in order to avoid any confusion with the style of captaincy, they [the selectors] would have thought of giving Rohit the captaincy for white-ball cricket. Although Rohit would be leading the T20 team, he would have his ideas as far as identifying the core players [is concerned].”
Though BCCI President Sourav Ganguly explains the exact reason for Rohit Sharma’s appointment as ODI skipper, many fans believe that BCCI should considered Virat’s captaincy records before taking the decision of changing the ODI captaincy role.
New white-ball skipper Rohit Sharma will lead the team in the South Africa tour of India where the teams will lock their horns to play 3 match Test series and as many as the ODI match series.
