Everyone has forgotten that I made Rohit Sharma the captain: Sourav Ganguly

In 2021, India bowed out of the group stages of the T-20 World Cup after consecutive defeats to Pakistan and New Zealand. Although India hadn’t won a trophy for over 7 years at that point of time, they had always managed to enter the knockout stages. Virat Kohli had announced that he would step down as the captain of the T-20 squad even before the tournament commenced. The tenure of Indian all rounder Ravi Shastri as the coach of the Indian team had come to an end. The task to secure India’s future in cricket was cut out for the then Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) President Sourav Ganguly. 

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Ganguly had various important decisions to take such as appointing the captain to succeed Virat Kohli and appointing a new coach. It has been speculated that Ganguly held extensive discussions with the former Indian batsman Rahul Dravid who had found success with the Under-19 team to take up the role of the coach for the Indian Cricket Team. It is said that he also had to bring in some changes in the team’s setup to accommodate Rahul Dravid. “I was criticised when I handed over the captaincy to Rohit. And now that we've won a trophy under his captaincy, no one is abusing me. Everyone has forgotten that I made him the captain,” Ganguly recently said in an interaction with Bangla newspaper AajKaal. 

The pair of Rohit Sharma and Rahul Dravid came close on 3 occasions but missed the coveted ICC trophy by a whisker. In the 2024 ICC T-20 World Cup however, fortunes changed and India’s 11-year wait for a trophy came to an end.