Virat Kohli's removal as ODI skipper takes another turn

In what can be called as another twist in the tale over removal of Virat Kohli from ODI leadership, it has emerged that sacking Kohli was already on Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI) officials mind for long.

Though, Kohli himself decided to give up his T20I captaincy in order to  manage workload, but also clarified his intentions to continue leading in both Test and ODI cricket. 

But surprisingly, BCCI, before South African tour scrapped him of from the ODI leadership and appointed Rohit Sharma to lead the team, with Kohli only holding Test captaincy role. 

BCCI President Sourav Ganguly revealed that call was taken by the board and the selectors together to avoid "too much leadership" as stakeholders reached a common agreement of not having different skippers in white-ball formats.  

Ganguly also said that Kohli had turned down request to not step down as  T20I skipper as he told reporters on December 9: "We had requested Virat not to step down as T20 captain but he didn't want to continue as captain. So, the selectors felt that they cannot have two white-ball captains in two white-ball formats. That's too much of leadership."

Kohli told reporters in pre-departure conference ahead of South Africa tour: "I was contacted one-and-a-half hours before the selection meeting on December 8 for the Test series. 

Kohli added: "There was no prior communication to me at all from when I announced the T20I captaincy decision until the December 8 where, as I said, I got a call one-and-a-half hours before the selection meeting."

"The chief selector [Chetan Sharma] discussed with me the Test team to which we both agreed, and before ending the call I was told that the five selectors have decided that I will not be the ODI captain, to which I replied, 'okay fine'. And in the selection call afterwards, we chatted about it briefly. And that's what happened. There was no communication prior to that at all," India's star batter added.