'No One Is Abusing Me, Everyone Has Forgotten': Once Criticised For Making Rohit Sharma Captain, Sourav Ganguly Hits Back

Sourav Ganguly faced a lot of heat when he made Rohit Sharma captain of all three formats of the Indian cricket team.

All the Indian cricket fans remember Virat Kohli dropped a bomb by announcing he will step down as captain of Team India before the 2021 T20 World Cup even began. Kohli said that the decision was to manage his workload in all three formats. What came more as a surprise that Kohli quitting ODI and Test captaincy as well.

Later on, there was an explosive press interaction in which Virat claimed he was informed 90 minutes prior to the decision where he was being replaced as the ODI captain. He denied that BCCI informed him about the decision much earlier as claimed by the board that time.

In 2022 January, Virat resigned from India's Test captaincy and the heat of that moment was faced by Sourav Ganguly, the BCCI president at that time. He faced a lot of online heat as fans blamed him that he forced Kohli to step away from captaincy of Test and ODI cricket. (HIGHLIGHTS | IND-C vs PAK-C, WCL Final 2024: Yuvraj Singh's India Champions Lift The Title)

That era now feels like a distant memory, with India clinching the T20 World Cup championship under the leadership of Rohit Sharma, who succeeded Kohli as captain in all formats.

Ganguly has recalled the time when he was being criticised for appointing Rohit as captain. “When I handed Rohit Sharma the captaincy of the Indian team, everyone criticised me,” the former India captain told AajKal. (Jay Shah Instructs BCCI To Release Rs 1 Crore For Anshuman Gaekwad's Treatment)

“Now that India has won the T20 World Cup under the captaincy of Rohit Sharma, everyone has stopped abusing me for it. In fact, I think everyone has forgotten that it was I who appointed him as the captain of the Indian team,” he added.

India skipper Rohit Sharma attended the first semi-final clash of the Wimbledon 2024 between Daniil Medvedev and Carlos Alcaraz at the centre court on Friday. After winning the T20 World Cup, Rohit Sharma announced his retirement from the 20-over format. The Men in Blue got hold of the prestigious T20 WC trophy for the second time, defeating South Africa by seven runs in Barbados on June 29.

With 4231 runs in 159 games, Rohit is the format's best scorer going out. He also owns the record for most hundreds (five) in T20 internationals. He has won two T20 World Cups: the first in 2007 while competing and the current one in 2024 as captain.