Indian captain Rohit Sharma has been dropped from the Sydney Test in the Border Gavaskar Trophy. Clash with head coach Gautam Gambhir and poor form proved to be his biggest enemy. Despite being the captain, not getting a place in the playing eleven is surprising. Everyone is surprised by this. However, this is not the first time. A similar incident had happened 50 years ago with Team India player S Venkataraghavan. Despite being the captain, he was also made to sit on the bench, after which he was forced to give water to the players. Not only this, the command of the team was taken away from him mid-flight. Let us know what happened to him.

How was Venkataraghavan out?

During 1974-75, West Indies toured India for a 5-match series. Star spinner S Venkataraghavan was given the captaincy of Team India during the second test. His performance in this match was very poor. He could take only 1 wicket. The Indian team lost by an innings and 17 runs. After this Venkataraghavan was dropped from the team. He did not find a place in the playing eleven in the next three Tests and kept playing as the 12th player.

Captaincy was snatched away in flight

After the West Indies series, Venkataraghavan got the captaincy of Team India for the 4-match Test series on England tour in 1979. On this tour, they lost 1 match while were successful in drawing 3 matches. However, his performance in bowling was also poor, after which his captaincy was snatched away and given to Sunil Gavaskar. The most surprising thing is that during his return home, mid-flight, it was announced that he would be removed from the captaincy. The flight coach had informed that Gavaskar would be made the new captain of the team by removing Venkataraghavan from the mic.

The entire team was surprised by this decision. Venkataraghavan captained 5 Test matches in his career, losing 2 of them. There were 3 matches drawn. Talking about ODI, he captained a total of 7 ODI matches including the 1975 and 1979 World Cups. He could win only 1 match, while had to face defeat in 6. Venkataraghavan, who hails from R Ashwin's home state Tamil Nadu, took 156 wickets in 57 Tests. He took 1390 wickets in 341 first class matches, whereas he could take only 5 wickets in 15 ODIs.