Another Controversy in Indian Cricket: Virat Kohli Speaks Openly About His Removal as the Captain

Kohli also told that he was informed of being terminated as India’s ODI captain only one-and-a-half hours before the announcement of the Test squad for the series against South Africa on December 8. Explaining his version of the events before and during his meeting with the selection committee, Kohli expressed that the Chetan Sharma-led panel had not previously communicated with him a decision to have him succeeded at the helm of the 50-over side by Rohit Sharma, even when he’d decided to step down as captain of the T20I team at the end of the World Cup in the UAE and Oman. Kohli BCCI Controversy .

“I was contacted one-and-a-half hours before the selection meeting on the eighth [December] for the Test series,” Kohli said at a press conference. “There was no prior communication to me at all since I announced the T20I captaincy decision until the 8th of December, where I got a call before the selection meeting. The chief selector [Chetan Sharma] discussed with me the Test team, to which we both agreed. And before ending the call, I was told the five selectors have decided I will not be the ODI captain, to which I replied, ‘okay, fine’, and in the selection call afterwards, we chatted about it briefly. That’s what happened. There was no communication prior to that at all.”

This in itself is a big controversy as it is contradictory to what the BCCI president Sourav Ganguly said about communicating with Virat Kohli. Ganguly had said that the Board had requested Kohli to step down as the ODI skipper and he did not. However, Kohli says that no communication took place between him and the BCCI regarding the same.