Reports: Virat Kohli unfollows Sourav Ganguly on Instagram after controversial handshake incident in IPL 2023

Former India skipper and RCB batter Virat Kohli has reportedly unfollowed Sourav Ganguly, former BCCI President and Delhi Capitals’ Director of Cricket, on Instagram. This has happened after a video of the two not shaking hands went viral. During RCB’s recently concluded game against DC, Ganguly avoided shaking hands with Kohli and jumped the line to move forward while the batter was talking to Ricky Ponting.

RCB defeated DC by 23 runs in the game, thereby handing the visiting side their fifth consecutive defeat in the tournament on April 15. When the players had been shaking hands, Kohli and Ponting stopped for a second and were seen talking, when Ganguly, who had been standing behind Ponting, jumped the queue and went on to shake hands with the players behind Kohli.

As per cricketcountry.com, the list under Kohli’s ‘following’ section doesn’t show Ganguly’s name, which previously wasn't the case. On the other hand, Ganguly’s ‘following’ section shows Kohli’s name, implying that the veteran follows the RCB batter but it is not the other way around. 

According to rumours, Virat Kohli and Sourav Ganguly didn't get along when the former was leading Team India and the latter was the BCCI president. Before Ganguly’s tenure as the president came to an end, Rohit Sharma had taken over the captaincy role from Virat Kohli. Speaking of the changes, Ganguly had said that the call was taken by the BCCI and the selectors together.

“It's a call that the BCCI and the selectors took together. Actually, the BCCI had requested Virat to not step down as the T20I skipper, but, obviously, he did not agree. And the selectors then did not feel it right to have two different captains for two white-ball formats,” Ganguly had said back then.

A week after that, Kohli made a startling admission that he and the selection committee had never spoken. Speaking at a press conference during India’s tour of South Africa in 2021-22, Kohli had said:

“There was no prior communication with me at all since I announced the T20 captaincy decision until the 8th of December. I was told that the selectors had decided that I won’t be ODI captain to which I replied, ‘Okay, fine’. There was no prior communication. That is what happened.”