At a time when there’s plenty of chatter around Rishabh Pant’s captaincy future at Delhi Capitals, the franchise has completed an overhaul of the entire backroom staff and Sourav Ganguly will no longer be involved in the Indian Premier League from 2025 season onwards. Former India cricketer Venugopal Rao will replace him as Director of Cricket and it’s understood that Ganguly will be the “Women’s Director of Cricket”.
“Sourav Ganguly will no longer be participating in working and functioning of the Delhi Capitals in the IPL.You can say he will be the Women’s Director of Cricket and will mostly be overseeing the Women’s Premier League team and the Pretoria Capitals in SA20,” says a source tracking developments.
It is further understood that the former India captain was keen to double up as the men’s team head coach and Director of Cricket, but it didn’t happen. After a very long time, Ganguly will not be associated with men’s cricket in any capacity. He has been a former Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) President, part of numerous cricket committees and most recently the Director of Cricket at Delhi Capitals.
The former India captain is currently the Chair of the International Cricket Council (ICC) Men’s Cricket Committee but even that is likely to change as the global cricket body is set for an overhaul later this year.
The Capitals have well and truly pressed the reset button ahead of the mega auction, and the captaincy picture is likely to become clearer in the coming days.
“The ball I feel is in Rishabh Pant’s court now. Whether or not he wants to continue only as a player,” said a team source.
Delhi have finalised their three retentions in Pant, Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav and the franchise is likely to exercise the Right-to-Match (RTM) card option to buy back their other players. As far as the uncapped retention is concerned, there is an exciting option in Abhishek Porel, who showed tremendous growth last season, but no final decision has been reached yet.
DC likely to hold trials next week
Now that the formalities are more or less complete, DC will start with preparations for the mega auction and hold trials from next week. They have already identified three venues and will finalise as per availability.
Very soon, they will start reaching out to their potential targets and prepare their wishlist before the IPL mega auction likely in last week of November. The ongoing Ranji Trophy could hamper their plans because most players are busy with their respective states but the franchise doesn’t have much time. Some of the other franchises like Mumbai Indians and Rajasthan Royals finished their trials before the Ranji Trophy got underway.