What! Virat Kohli has switched off his phone, his childhood coach reveals

Virat Kohli’s childhood coach Rajkumar Sharma on Saturday lashed out at the national selectors and BCCI president Sourav Ganguly for the way they handled the Team India’s ODI captaincy issue recently. Rajkumar felt that the selectors should have asked Kohli to step down as captain from both T20Is and ODIs or shouldn’t have changed the skipper at all.

The batter had decided to T20 captaincy as he did not want to continue in the post after the World Cup in the UAE. Rohit was handed over the job after the tournament, and now the board made another announcement to make the Mumbai Indians skipper the captain in the ODI format as well.

“I haven’t talked to him (Virat Kohli) yet. His phone is switched off for some reason. But as far as my opinion is concerned, he had specifically stepped down from T20 captaincy and the selectors sh’uld’ve straightaway asked him to step down from both the white-ball formats or not step down at all,” said Rajkumar while speaking on the Khelneeti podcast.

Ganguly was recently quoted as saying that the selectors were in no mood to have separate captains in T20Is and ODIs as it would cause confusion in the team.

To this, Kohli’s coach said he was surprised by the BCCI chief’s comments. “I read Sourav Ganguly’s comments recently that they had asked Kohli to not step down from T20I captaincy (before the World Cup). I don’t recall anything like that. This statement came as a surprise to me. There are different statements circulating around,” he said.

“The selection committee doesn’t provide a reason behind the decision. We don’t know what the management or the BCCI or the selectors want. There’s no clarification, no transparency at all. It’s a pity how this has happened. He has been such a successful one-day captain,” he added.