Ricky Ponting on why it was right call to give Test captaincy to Shubman Gill over Jasprit Bumrah: ‘You can't have a captain coming in and missing games'
Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting said that India had made the right call in appointing Shubman Gill as Test captain as opposed to the likes of the more experience Jasprit Bumrah due to the latter's injury history.
'I actually think it's the right move. I know there's a lot of other people out there, pundits out there saying they can't understand why it wasn't Bumrah and why they have gone to Shubman, but I think it's pretty simple,' Ponting told The ICC Review.
'Bumrah's injuries are holding him back a bit in the last couple of years and you don't want that with a captain. You can't have a captain coming in and missing games here and there, so I think it's the right decision.' 'Now that they've made it, it's one they've got to stick with and give him (Gill) a good crack at it for a long period of time,' he added.
India will be without the experience of Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Ravichandran Ashwin, all of whom retired from the format while the veteran pacer Mohammed Shami also couldn't make the cut for the England tour after his fitness was found not up to the mark.
Speaking on that, Ponting said it was tough to replace experienced personnel but he was also hopeful that Indian could handle the transition better than other countries.
'It's always very hard to replace players like that, (given) that have been around for so long that have played that much Test cricket. But if any country can do it and do it quickly, India can, because of the amount of young talent that they have,' Ponting said.
'I've seen it first hand for 10 years now around the IPL and we've seen the emergence of (Yashasvi) Jaiswal and these sort of guys that have come into international cricket with India and (have) done really well pretty much straight away. The skill side of it's one thing to replace and India will replace the skill side of it easily enough, but the experience is the big thing that's going to be missing for them. Now even with a young captain with Shubman Gill, they'll still have some experience around with KL Rahul and Bumrah and these sort of guys. But if you look at a rebuilding sort of phase, India can cope with it better than most other teams,' he added.
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