Young Indian batter Shubman Gill is set to lead India in the five-match Test series against England after being appointed India’s Test skipper, taking over from Rohit Sharma. Rohit Sharma called time on his Test career recently, putting an end to a career that spanned 12 years.
There were reports earlier floating around that Bumrah would be named India’s Test captain, but he wasn’t appointed as captain due to fitness concerns and workload management. Meanwhile, Gill, who has played 32 Test matches for India, scoring 1893 runs, has big shoes to fill. Rishabh Pant has been named Gill's deputy. Recently, speaking on Gill’s appointment, former Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar had a piece of advice for the young opener.
“There is always pressure on the player who gets elected as India's captain as there is a big difference between being a member of the team and being the captain," Gavaskar said, as quoted by Sports Tak.
“Because when you are a team member, you generally just interact with players close to you, but when you become the captain, you should behave in a way that the other players in the team respect you and a captain's behaviour is more important than his performance," he added.
India will face England in the first of five Tests on June 20 at Headingley, Leeds.
India Test squad: Shubman Gill (c), Rishabh Pant (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Karun Nair, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja, Druv Jurel, Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna , Akash Deep, Arshdeep Singh, Kuldeep Yadav