When India's Test Cricket Captain Virat Kohli announced that he would be meeting the Press on the eve of the team's departure to South Africa, there was a hint that something more than the team's on-field chances in the Test series was going to be spoken about. There had been rumours about how Kohli had been given a 48-hour deadline by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to quit as one-day international (ODI) Captain, and he was sacked when he refused, and Rohit Sharma was handed the job. Coming as this did weeks after he stepped down as captain of the T20 team, it was clear that Kohli was not a happy man, and was keen to put forward his side of the story.
“I was contacted one-and-a-half hours before the selection meeting on the eighth for the Test series….The chief selector discussed with me the Test team to which we both agreed, and before ending the call, I was told that the five selectors have decided that I will not be the ODI captain. To which I replied, 'ok fine'," said Kohli setting the cat among the pigeons.
Kohli made this statement in a matter of fact manner. It was only as if he was clarifying his side of the story about his sacking. But the ripples it sent across Indian cricket will take a while to settle. The heat faced by the BCCI went up several degrees soon after. The BCCI was at complete liberty to choose their captain. But should Kohli have been treated so shabbily? Could the communication not have been handled better?
Kohli's statement has pushed BCCI President Saurav Ganguly into a difficult situation. Ganguly had earlier said he directly spoke to Kohli, and asked him not to quit the captaincy of the T20 team, and he now has to explain why Kohli says that no one asked him to stay on; and the BCCI in fact felt that his quitting was a progressive step for the future.
Clearly one of them is not telling the entire truth.
It was apparent that tensions were building between the BCCI top brass and Kohli for at least the last six months. Ravi Shastri's statement that neither he nor Kohli were consulted about the composition of the Indian team for the T20 World Cup was perhaps the clearest indication that all was not well between the Kohli-Shastri team and the head honchos in the BCCI.
Earlier there were media reports that irked by being persistently kept out from the playing XI during the Test tour of England, Ravichandran Ashwin had shot off a letter listing his grievances about the captain (and presumably the chief coach) to the BCCI. In this context the return of Ashwin to the T20 squad for the World Cup after being out of the T20 team for over two years was perhaps an indication of the BCCI sending a stern message to Kohli. Ashwin was again not picked in the playing XI until India was out of contention in the event. Maybe around this time the fate of Kohli's captaincy was sealed.
On the tour of England, there were other tensions too with the breaching of COVID-19 protocol by the captain and coach to attend a book launch event. There too the BCCI did not hide its displeasure. The lack of success in International Cricket Council (ICC) events has always been a sore point about the Kohli era, both within the BCCI and among cricket fans, and the debacle in the T20 World Cup was the last straw.
Rahul Dravid taking over as the chief coach also meant that the hitherto virtually unquestioned Kohli (thanks to his rapport with Shastri) would have had to take orders from a more process-driven and no nonsense kind of a coach. Ergo, he had to go.
As he stepped down as T20 captain, Kohli went on to publicly announce in the same tweet, “I feel I need to give myself space to be fully ready to lead the Indian team in Test and ODI Cricket.”
This was taken by many to mean that he was announcing that he would continue to lead the team in these two formats. Was this discussed with the BCCI beforehand, or did Kohli just presume that he would continue? Or was it even a pressure tactic to get the BCCI to agree? Apparently this statement was not taken too kindly by the BCCI, who felt, and rightly so, that it was their prerogative to make any such decision, and consequently an announcement.
The rift between the BCCI and Kohli also brought the spotlight on the somewhat difficult equation between him and Rohit Sharma. While Kohli took pains to say that there was no rift between them, the very nature of the issue at hand with Sharma being handed Kohli's job, first in the T20 team and now in the ODI team, makes for an uneasy relationship. Both of them are senior professionals, and it is hoped they would put aside egos and place the team first.
The one who emerges poorly out of this fiasco is Ganguly. When he took over as BCCI President, it was widely expected that he would be the independent, straight talking, pugnacious ‘Dada’ that fans have known. Instead he has mostly stayed in the shadows lending legitimacy to decisions that are increasingly seen as being taken by others. Jay Shah, the BCCI Secretary, has been the very visible face of the Board, and Ganguly who has also had to battle ill-health over the last year seems to be unable or unwilling to stamp his authority on the Board.
A Stop Gap Arrangement
The appointment of Sharma as captain seems to be more of a stop-gap arrangement. At 34, he is older than Kohli, and captaincy is being handed over to him in the twilight of his career. The BCCI in the recent past has a tradition of appointing those in the mid- to late-twenties as captains (Mohammad Azharuddin, Sachin Tendulkar, Ganguly, MS Dhoni, and Kohli) and Sharma’s appointment may be to stabilise the ship until a leader for the next five years is chosen.
The ball is now in the BCCI's court to respond to Kohli's allegations. So far the response seems to have been through leaks from ‘sources’ that a show cause notice will be sent, and that Kohli was not accessible after the matches to the team, and even BCCI officials etc. The battle lines are well and truly drawn. Sadly, whoever wins, Indian cricket will be the loser.
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