Gavaskar: Virat Kohli needed to be formally re-appointed as captain

New Delhi: Virat Kohli’s appointment as captain ended with the ICC World Cup 2019 and he needed to be formally re-appointed, Sunil Gavaskar, the former India captain, has pointed out.

“That they selected the team for West Indies without first having a meeting to select the captain brings up the question of whether Virat Kohli is the captain of the team at his or the selection committee’s pleasure,” Gavaskar wrote in his column for Mid-Day.

“To the best of our knowledge [Kohli’s] appointment was till the World Cup. After that, it was incumbent on the selectors to meet even if it was for five minutes for his reappointment,” he added.

However, the selection committee named Kohli as captain of the team across all the three formats for the Windies tour that begins with T20Is.

The Committee of Administrators (CoA) has stated it will not review the performance of the team in the World Cup and that only the manager’s report will be looked into.

'Lame ducks'

Gavaskar also questioned why Kohli has been getting his choice of team composition. “Speaking of lame ducks, the Indian selection committee appears to be one. After the reappointment, [the captain] gets invited to the meeting for his views on selecting the players for the team. By bypassing the procedure, the message that goes out is that while the players like Kedar Jadhav [and] Dinesh Karthik get dropped after below-expectation performance, the captain continues despite much below-par expectations where the team did not even reach the final,” Gavaskar said.

Certain sections in the BCCI have argued that splitting the captaincy could be a way forward for the Indian team as it looks to plan for the 2023 World Cup.