The rift between former Indian captains Virat Kohli and Sourav Ganguly has reportedly hit a new high with both the cricketers unfollowing each other on social media. Here, in this article, we bring you 3 lesser-known facts about the whole Ganguly-Kohli controversy:
How it started?
Ganguly and Kohli once shared a great bond of friendship with each other, however, things have turned bitter now. Their equation changed in 2021 when then India’s all-format skipper Virat stepped down from the T20I captaincy role. Following his decision to step down from T20 captaincy, the then BCCI president Sourav Ganguly also sacked him from ODI and Test captaincy.
The BCCI president made that decision as he didn’t want split captaincy in the Indian team. Keeping in mind the same split thing theory Ganguly opted for Rohit Sharma as the all-format skipper replacing Kohli.
Shots were fired against each other openly in interviews. Once Kohli revealed that he was contacted about his captaincy removal via a phone call. He said “I was contacted one and a half hours before the selection meeting on the 8th for the Test series and there was no prior communication to me at all,”
Virat Kohli wanted to let go of everything:
During the aforementioned saga, Kohli’s career hit an all-time low last year. However, he made an incredible comeback after taking a lengthy break from the sport. Recently, in an interview, Kohli revealed how he got off the lean run from last year’s Asia Cup and stated that he was ready to accept that he might have entered the last days of his career.
“The most important factor in that whole transnational period before the Asia Cup last year was the fact that I was willing to let go of everything. I was willing to accept that when I go back and play, it might be the last month of me playing competitive cricket and I am absolutely okay with it,”
He added: “Everyone was like we observe this and this is the solution for it. I couldn’t get the point across that whatever shortcoming is, there is because of this (pointing towards his head). When you are not right mentally, you are all over the place. There were no technical issues because I have done this for 15 years. It can’t be that all went to a standstill and the technical issues pop out right now. When I came back fresh and started hitting the ball again and people were like ‘oh you made some serious changes’. But I didn’t pick up the bat for six weeks,”
Ganguly and Kohli’s unfriendly interaction in IPL 2023:
After all the captaincy controversy, that took last year, Ganguly and Virat Kohli faced each other for the first time when Royal Challengers Bangalore took on Delhi Capitals in the ongoing 2023 edition of the Indian Premier League.
Several pictures and videos have been circulating on social media where King Kohli can be seen giving a cold and deadly start to Ganguly on several occasions in the game. Ganguly even skipped the line to avoid the customary handshake with Kohli after RCB won the game by 23 runs.
While no words were exchanged between the two, but the videos made it crystal clear that nothing is good between the two now.
The unfriendly meeting ended up with Kohli unfollowing Ganguly on his Instagram account, sending a clear message that there is something wrong between the two. Ganguly hit back by unfollowing Virat Kohli on Monday.
