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Yeh Jo India Hai Na… Yahan we are mad about cricket. And even 'madder' about our cricket icons and, right now, what’s happening between the two icons Sourav Ganguly and Virat Kohli is hurting our fans.
Should Kohli be the One Day International (ODI) captain or not? Is it the right time for Rohit Sharma to take over? Should India have two captains for red and white-ball cricket? Was it Kohli’s dip in form, was it Kohli’s defence of Shami from Islamophobic trolling, or was it doing poorly at the T-20 World Cup? The problem is not the WHY though. What’s hurting our fans is HOW… How poorly this captaincy mess has been handled!
Kohli Gives Up T-20 Captaincy
Kohli announces he’s giving up T-20 captaincy. He says nothing about ODI captaincy. Weeks later, big news. Rohit Sharma is made both ODI and T-20 captain. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) says India can’t have two white-ball captains.
Ganguly says he asked Kohli to not give up T-20 captaincy. Kohli says Ganguly never said this to him. What are the fans supposed to think? Is one of these icons lying?
Kohli says he was told about losing the ODI captaincy just an hour before the public was told. We also hear that Rohit Sharma will miss the Tests in South Africa, and Kohli will miss the ODIs.
Oh, it's a rift. They won’t play under each other. BCCI goes silent on this. Days later Kohli clarifies he’s available for the ODIs. Yes... a complete mess!
All this 'saas-bahu' style drama is playing out when Team India is about to fly to South Africa, the country we are YET to beat at home in a Test series. We have a good team, we’ve just beaten the Aussies at home, we are 2-1 ahead in the series against England in England.
But instead of allowing them to focus on cricket, what are we doing? We are messing with their minds. They are seeing media reports of 'Kohli versus BCCI,' 'Rohit versus Virat,' 'Are players unhappy with Kohli?' 'Are there camps in the team?' 'Kya koyi Kohli ka favourite hai,' 'koyi Rohit ka favourite hai?' They don’t know what frame of mind captain Kohli is in.
Is the BCCI giving the team any clarity on all this? Doubtful. With the BCCI barely communicating with Kohli, I fear that the team right now is confused, agitated, and thinking about everything else except beating South Africa. And they already have Omicron to worry about.
Lessons From the Past – Greg Chappell and Ganguly
The other tragedy is that Yeh Jo India Hai Na, it does not learn from history. Even more surprising this time, because Dada, Sourav Ganguly, is the BCCI chief, and he would have a clear memory of how shabbily the BCCI can treat Indian cricket captains.
Rewind to 2005 – Ganguly was the captain. Like Kohli, a successful and popular captain. Greg Chappell was the coach. And they clashed. Chappell wanted Ganguly to give up captaincy and focus on batting. There were reports of both Ganguly and Chappell threatening to quit.
Then came the email leak: Chappell had sent an email to the BCCI saying Ganguly was "mentally and physically unfit" to lead India, that he was pretending to be injured, and had "lost the trust and respect of his teammates." And this email was leaked.
We don’t know if it was leaked by Chappell or the BCCI, but soon after, Ganguly was dropped as the ODI captain, and as Test captain too.
It was just as messy as what’s unfolding today. The BCCI mismanaged the Ganguly-Chappell clash then – captain Ganguly was dealt with shabbily. And it’s frustrating to see that even with Dada as the BCCI chief, the captaincy issue has been handled poorly by the BCCI yet again.
It has happened in the past too. As Abhishek Mukherjee, writing for The Quint recalls, Ajit Wadekar in 1974, after losing a series 3-0 to England, lost his captaincy, lost his place in the national team, even his place in the West Zone team! Gavaskar in 1979 heard he had lost his captaincy over the public address (PA) system in an airline flight, and even the great Sachin Tendulkar in 1997 heard he had lost the captaincy from news reports and not from the BCCI.
Yeh Jo India Ke Hum Cricket Fans Hai Na… we understand that our favourite captain won’t stay in charge forever, but all we want is for the BCCI to handle these changes with transparency and dignity.
We owe it to these iconic captains, we owe it to the teams they lead so that change of captaincy doesn’t throw the team into turmoil each time. Come on Dada... you changed Indian cricket with your captaincy, do the same as the BCCI ka Dada as well!
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