The Indian cricket team experienced a significant achievement in an ICC tournament when the team, led by Rohit Sharma, won the T20 World Cup 2024 by beating South Africa in the final. This victory marked India’s first ICC title since the 2013 Champions Trophy, which was also a win under MS Dhoni’s leadership. Although Virat Kohli had not been able to secure an ICC title for India as captain, Rohit achieved this long-awaited success while leading the team. However, when Rohit took over as captain from Virat, not everyone in Indian cricket was happy about it. In fact, Sourav Ganguly, who was the BCCI president at the time, faced a lot of criticism for this decision.
As all of India celebrates Rohit Sharma’s success as the team’s captain, Ganguly pointed out that it was his suggestion to appoint Rohit as the skipper.
“When I gave Rohit the captain’s role, I faced criticism. But now that we’ve won a championship with him as captain, people aren’t blaming me anymore. They’ve forgotten that I chose him as the captain,” Ganguly said in an interview with the Bangla newspaper AajKaal.
Kohli voluntarily stepped down from leading India in T20 matches, but was removed from the ODI captaincy. Shortly after, Virat also decided to leave his position as the Test captain. The BCCI then chose to make Rohit the captain across all three formats of the game.
The change in leadership, particularly the way it happened, led to a lot of criticism for Ganguly. Fans and some former cricket players were unhappy with how the board managed the situation.
Ganguly, who faced a lot of negative comments, online harassment, and questions on social media, has now chosen to remind those who are praising India’s victory in the T20 World Cup but were previously criticizing him.
Following India’s win in the T20 World Cup, both Rohit and Virat decided to retire from their T20 international cricket. This means India will have a new leader for the shortest format of the game, but Rohit will still be leading the side One Day Internationals (ODIs) and Test matches.
