‘He was reluctant because…’ - Sourav Ganguly opens up about moment when he approached Rohit Sharma for Test captaincy

Former BCCI president and ex-India skipper, Sourav Ganguly, once again touched on the most debated topic in Indian cricket. The topic was the transformation of Team India’s Test captaincy from Virat Kohli to Rohit Sharma. He also revealed Rohit Sharma’s response to the proposal of taking up the Test captaincy.

Notably, the BCCI had marked Rohit Sharma as their preference to hand over the captaincy of the Indian team in the longest format of the game. It was also recorded as one of the controversial phases in Indian cricket when the stances of Virat Kohli and BCCI president Ganguly completely differed from each other.

He was reluctant because of the workload – Sourav Ganguly on Rohit Sharma

Meanwhile, Kohli's decision to leave Test captaincy also came as a shock for the Indian cricket fans and the entire Indian cricketing fraternity.

“We always wanted Virat to be captain, but he did not want to continue. And that’s what it was. And then obviously Rohit came in, he was captaining the Mumbai Indians. He was captaining a 50-over T20. We needed a test captain because Virat Kohli was the Test captain by then, and he finished in South Africa. I always believed that Rohit was a very good captain. So obviously, the request from the board, I went to him that you know, you should captain in test matches. He was reluctant because of the workload,” said Ganguly to PTI in an interview.

“But then I remember having a conversation with him that you don’t want to finish your career without captaining Indian test matches. So that struck a chord with him, and then he took a couple of days, and then he agreed. He’s a very adjustable person, a very friendly person. If you have conversations with him, he’ll agree and accept and do things. And why wouldn’t anybody want to be in this test game?” he added later.