BCCI President Sourav Ganguly hopes that India puts up a better performance in next year’s World Cup under Rohit Sharma’s captaincy

Rohit Sharma’s appointment as Indian ODI team captain saw mixed reactions from the Indian cricket fans. This happened after Virat Kohli decided to give away the T20 captaincy to focus more on the other two formats. But the BCCI opted for a single limited-overs captain for the team. So they decided to hand Rohit Sharma the overall limited-overs captaincy of team India.

Team India under the leadership of Rohit Sharma defeated New Zealand 3-0 at home marking a brilliant start to his captaincy stint. BCCI President Sourav Ganguly who received a lot of criticism for some of his claims regarding Virat Kohli has backed Rohit Sharma to succeed as the next India captain on an interview with Boria Majumder. He even claimed Rohit as the best choice for the role.

“He deserves that position because of what he has done as captain,” Ganguly said on ‘Backstage with Boria’.

“Five titles with Mumbai, another one with Deccan Chargers speaks volume of his ability under pressure. Once Virat decided he doesn’t want to be part of T20 leadership, he was the best choice. He started well, beating NZ 3-0 in India. Hopefully, we will see a better result for India next year than what we saw this year,” added the BCCI President.

India failed to win a single ICC trophy under Virat Kohli’s captaincy and that was one of the primary reasons for his dismissal from captaincy. The Men in Blue came close multiple times but never got their hands on the elusive trophy. The closest they came was in 2017 when they lost the Champions Trophy finals against Pakistan.

Ganguly emphasised on how India played really well in 2017 and also gave great account of themselves in the 2019 World Cup. But according to the former India skipper, India played their worst cricket in this World Cup.

“To be honest, in 2017 Champions Trophy and 2019 World Cup, India was good. We were exceptional in the 2019 World Cup, one bad day and our entire hard work of two months was wiped away. I was disappointed with the way we played this World Cup (T20 WC 2021). It was the poorest we played in the past 4-5 years,” said the BCCI President.

It will be interesting to see how the Men in Blue turn up with their new captain Rohit Sharma at the helm. With the World Cup in Australia just around the corner, India needs to get a lot of things right to improve on their recent performances.