Indian selector committee led by MSK Prasad retained Virat Kohli as the captain of the Indian team across all the formats of the game ahead of the upcoming tour to West Indies.
Ever since the heartbreaking exit of the Indian cricket team from the World Cup 2019, there were numerous opinions on whether Virat Kohli should continue as the captain for India or the team should go for split captaincy or make someone else the skipper. Seems like the debate is still on and is now joined by Sunil Gavaskar and Sanjay Manjrekar.
Earlier Sunil Gavaskar, in his column for Mid-Day, wrote, “That they selected the team for West Indies without first having a meeting to select the captain brings up the question of whether Virat Kohli is the captain of the team at his or the selection committee’s pleasure,”
He added: “To the best of our knowledge, his (Kohli’s) appointment was till the World Cup. After that, it was incumbent on the selectors to meet even if it was for five minutes for his reappointment,”
Sunil Gavaskar had also pointed fingers at the way Kohli is getting his choice of team. He wrote:
“Speaking of lame ducks, the Indian selection committee appears to be one. After the reappointment, he (Captain) gets invited to the meeting for his views on selecting the players for the team. By bypassing the procedure, the message that goes out is that while the players like Kedar Jadhav, Dinesh Karthik get dropped after below expectation performance, the captain continues despite much below par expectations where the team did not even reach the finals,”
However, Indian commentator Sanjay Manjrekar had a different point of view and disagreed with Sunil Gavaskar on Virat Kohli’s captaincy.
Sanjay Manjrekar, who was recently in news for all the wrong reasons after he called Indian all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja a ‘bits-and-pieces’ player, took to his twitter and ‘respectfully disagreed’ with Gavaskar. He pointed out that the performance of Indian cricket team was not below par as the Men in Blue lost just 2 matches in their campaign, including the semi-finale which led to their exit. He wrote:
“Respectfully disagree with Gavaskar Sir with his views on Indian selectors & Virat being retained as capt. No, Ind did not put in a ‘much below par WC performance’, they won 7 lost two. Last one very narrowly. And integrity a far more important quality as selector than stature.”
Respectfully disagree with Gavaskar Sir with his views on Indian selectors & Virat being retained as capt. No, Ind did not put in a ‘much below par WC performance’, they won 7 lost two. Last one very narrowly. And integrity a far more important quality as selector than stature.
— Sanjay Manjrekar (@sanjaymanjrekar) July 29, 2019
