Virat Kohli wasn’t interested to lead in T20Is, I didn’t remove him from captaincy: Sourav Ganguly

Virat Kohli’s India captaincy came to an end under Sourav Ganguly’s tenure as BCCI president and for a section of fans and experts, it was the deteriorating relationship between the two that led to the star batter quitting the captaincy. Kohli left India’s T20I captaincy after the Men in Blue exited the T20 World Cup in 2021 from the group stage. He was then removed from ODI captaincy before Kohli decided to also give up the Test captaincy.

Ganguly has now opened up on Kohli leaving India’s captaincy and said that he wasn’t behind the Delhi cricketer’s decision.

“I didn’t remove Virat from captaincy,” Ganguly said on Dadagiri Unlimited Season 10. “I have said this a lot of times. He wasn’t interested to lead in T20Is. So, after he made that decision, I told him, if you’re not interested to lead in T20Is, it’s better if you step down from entire white-ball cricket. Let there be a white-ball captain and a red-ball captain.”

The former India captain added that he pushed for Rohit Sharma to take over the captaincy role in all formats after Kohli decided to step down.

“I pushed Rohit Sharma a bit to take up the captaincy role because he wasn’t interested to lead in all three formats of the game. So, maybe I have a bit of contribution in that but no matter who is administrating, it’s the players who perform well on the field. I was appointed as the President of BCCI to work for the betterment of Indian cricket, this is a small part of it,” Ganguly said.

Kohli captained India in 68 Tests and won 40 of them becoming the most successful captain in the longest format for the country. He won 65 out of 95 matches as India captain in ODIs and 30 out of 50 in T20Is.