Former India captain Dilip Vengsarkar has lashed out at BCCI President Sourav Ganguly for crossing his limits when the latter spoke on behalf of the selectors in the sacking of Virat Kohli as the ODI skipper.
Speaking to Dubai-based Khaleej Times, Vengsarkar said, “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.”
While announcing the team for the South Africa tour, the BCCI had stunned everyone by announcing the sacking of Virat Kohli as the captain of thee ODI team. Ganguly had said that the decision to sack Kohli and appoint Rohit Sharma as his successor was the collective decision of the the Indian selection committee.
Vengsarkar told the Dubai-based publication, “It’s very unfortunate, the whole thing. I think it should have been handled more professionally by the cricket board.”
Virat Kohli had held an extraordinary press conference to expose Ganguly by revealing the contradictions in the latter’s claims. Ganguly had earlier told a news agency that the BCCI was not in favour of Kohli stepping down as the T20 captain.
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.”
India are currently in South Africa to play Test and ODI series. Rohit Sharma has made himself unavailable for the Test series citing injuries even though many felt that the Mumbai batsman wasn’t keen to play under Kohli’s captaincy. There were also reports of Kohli opting out of the ODI series since he too wasn’t keen to play under Sharma’s captaincy. But Kohli denied such reports in his press conference and said that he was tired of explaining that there was no rift between him and Sharma.