Legendary India captain Sourav Ganguly has said that he always knew that Rohit Sharma would turn out to be a great captain for India when he was the President of the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India). Rohit recently announced his retirement from Tests ahead of the upcoming tour of England.
As a result, his 12-year-long career has come to an end with his last appearance in Tests coming in December 2024 against Australia. Recently, Ganguly also shared his views on Rohit’s retirement and mentioned how the board backed him as the captain in 2022, seeing his leadership skills.
“He is a great player for India, but someone has to leave the game. My best wishes to him. He had a good career, he will play One Day for India and IPL… BCCI’s work is to support the player. When I was part of BCCI, we thought he would be a great captain for India and so he was. We won World Cup, Champion’s trophy, Test Cricket under him,” Ganguly told ANI.
Rohit took over India’s ODI and T20I captaincy in 2021 and was further appointed as the Test captain in 2022 after Virat Kohli stepped down from his position. He led India in 24 Tests and won 12, lost nine, while three ended in a draw. He led India to famous victories against Australia in Border Gavaskar Trophy 2023 and England in 2024.
Rohit was also just the second captain after MS Dhoni, under whose leadership India managed to draw a Test series in South Africa in 2023-24. Rohit finished his career with 4301 runs from 67 matches at an average of 40.57 and a strike rate of 57.05. He scored 12 hundreds in his career, all of which came in a winning cause. Rohit also hit a whopping 88 sixes in the longest format, the second most by an Indian after Virender Sehwag (91 sixes).