Gautam Gambhir opens up about the internal rift between Virat Kohli and Sourav Ganguly

The last two months have been quite chaotic for Indian cricket. Former cricket captain Virat Kohli has been at loggerheads with the top officials of BCCI including President Sourav Ganguly. It all began with Kohli being unceremoniously sacked as ODI captain following his decision to relinquish T20I captaincy.

The selection committee’s need for uniform white-ball captaincy trumped Kohli’s wishes and he was replaced by Rohit Sharma as the captain. Although BCCI President Sourav Ganguly spoke publicly about the decision and even mentioned that he had personally asked Kohli to not resign as T20I captain, the 33-year-old contradicted those claims in a media interaction suggesting that not all was well at the upper echelon of Indian cricket.

The ugly controversy reared another head after the Test series loss to South Africa. Virat Kohli decided to give up the captaincy of the Test team as well the following day and many believe that the rift with BCCI and Sourav Ganguly played a role behind that decision.

Former Indian opener Gautam Gambhir is known for speaking his mind without any second thoughts. Gambhir also shared his opinion on this issue and mentioned that it should’ve been sorted internally for the betterment of the team. He also added that he fails to see any controversy in the entire matter and expects a simple solution to the problem.

“I think this could’ve been sorted behind closed doors as well. It was an internal battle. It was a great TRP for a lot of new channels but that’s fine. If you go to the depth of it, the matter can easily be solved. It’s not that big of an issue,” said Gambhir while speaking on Times Now

The cricketer-turned-politician also heaped plenty of praise on his former Delhi teammate Virat Kohli and his captaincy, especially in the longest format of the sport. Gambhir mentioned that Kohli shouldn’t have stepped down as Test captain as he still had a lot to deliver.

“Honestly, I don’t see any controversy which was created. Talking about captaincy, I think Virat should have continued as red-ball captain. But for white-ball captaincy, once he decided to let go of T20I captaincy, he had to let go of ODI captaincy as well. The BCCI and the selectors were right from the white-ball point of view. But it was Virat’s personal decision to step down from Test captaincy, which he should have continued,” he added.