The news of the BCCI replacing Virat Kohli with Rohit Sharma as captain of the ODI team has given speculations to a lot of rumours. Many are unhappy the way, BCCI handled the entire issue where it looks Kohli was made the scapegoat for not winning a ICC title under his tenure. Moreover, what created more buzz was the manner in which the information was revealed, with the BCCI simply putting out a tweet saying, "The All-India Senior Selection Committee also decided to name Mr. Rohit Sharma as the Captain of the ODI & T20I teams going forward."Now the latest buzz is that the decision to step down as the ODI captain did not get along too well with Virat as he refused to do so and this propelled the BCCI to sack him and announce Rohit Sharma as the new ODI captain. As per reports published in TOI, the BCCI had asked Virat Kohli to announce his decision of stepping down as India’s ODI captain too ahead of the squad announcement for the South African tour.
The BCCI waited for 48 hours but Virat insisted on staying the ODI skipper and thus, the BCCI had to forcibly announce Rohit as the new ODI captain. Notably, BCCI wanted to give Virat an honourable exit from captaincy but Virat’s reluctance to step down himself did not go too well with the BCCI bosses and thus they splashed the whip and sacked the ‘not-so-famous’ captain. These reports clearly indicate that the rift between Virat and the board has intensified even more and it will be interesting to see how Virat adapts from hereon. It is learnt that the BCCI bosses, especially, Sourav Ganguly and Jay Shah had been pondering over Virat’s limited-overs captaincy for a long time. In October, ahead of the start of the T20 World Cup, Kohli had tweeted that he was going to step down as India's T20I captain after the ICC tournament, but clearly mentioned his intention to continue in ODIs and Tests, perhaps harbouring hopes of leading the team at the 2023 World Cup.
