Saurav Ganguly admitted that having 7 different players lead the Indian national cricket team in 7 months is not an ideal situation to have, but the BCCI President threw light on the “unavoidable circumstances” that have led to disorder.
7 Captains In 7 Months
Apart from Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, the likes of KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya and Jasprit Bumrah have led India in different formats this year. Dinesh Karthik, too, got to captain India, in a couple of warm-up T20 matches before this series. Also, Shikhar Dhawan will be leading the side in the ODI series in West Indies later this month, making it 7 different players to captain the country in 2022.
Sourav Ganguly Finally Addressed The Issue
Recognising this, Ganguly reflected on the other facets of this captaincy merry-go-round: the BCCI boss pointed out that injuries to Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul got Pant and Bumrah to don the captaincy hat and that with all of them rested, Dhawan get the opportunity to march the group in West Indies. Injury and necessary rest to key players is the only reason for so many captains, Ganguly insisted.
“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 an unavoidable situation. 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,” Sourav Ganguly told PTI
“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 asserted.
Rohit Sharma, meanwhile, created a new record of 13 consecutive T20I wins as a captain after leading India to victory in the first T20I vs England in Southampton. The second game is slated for Saturday.
