India’s Saga Of Captaincy: From the time of change in captaincy role post-Virat Kohli’s legacy, the team India is incessantly observing a dynamic change with the post losing its stable holder.
Since Rohit Sharma took over as India’s all-format captain, the position is being filled or replaced very often. Such a scenario wouldn’t be helping the team by having a streamlined thought process. The helm is receiving frequent tweaks during the decision-making process as different mindsets act at it.
As this is the situation, BCCI president Sourav Ganguly underscores the conditions as unavoidable and this is a required turn considering the need.
The team witnessed seven different players leading the side across three formats post-Rohit Sharma’s incumbency and Virat Kohli’s retirement as India’s all-format captain.
During South Africa’s test, Kohli led the side, while KL Rahul captained the team in the longest format and ODIs on the same tour. Meanwhile, Rishabh Pant and Hardik Pandya held the responsibility for India in T20Is against South Africa and Ireland respectively.
And during England’s long-delayed fifth test match recently held at Edgbaston, Jasprit Bumrah was given the opportunity to captain. Recently, there was an announcement from BCCI with Shikhar Dhawan set to lead India in the upcoming ODI series against West Indies.
With these many changes, the number has touched 7 and it is certainly not an ideal situation.
Speaking to PTI, Ganguly shared his views on frequency change in the captaincy role in Indian cricket, saying that such a situation arose owing to factors that were beyond anyone’s control.
“I fully agree that it is not ideal to have seven different captains in such a short span of time but it has happened because of unavoidable situations. Like Rohit was all set to lead in South Africa in white-ball but before the tour, got injured. So we had KL (Rahul) leading in ODIs and then for this recent SA home series, KL got injured one day before the series would start,” Ganguly said.
The BCCI chief also feels for head coach Rahul Dravid. “In England, Rohit was playing the warm-up game when he had COVID-19. No one is at fault for these situations. The calendar is such that we have had to give players breaks and then there have been injuries and we need to factor in workload management also. You got to feel for head coach Rahul (Dravid) as in every series, due to unavoidable circumstances, we have had new captains,” he said.
