Gill pads up for captaincy innings

The Hindu

25-05-2025

A little after 1.30 pm on Saturday, Ajit Agarkar formalised what everyone invested in Indian cricket knew was a foregone conclusion. The chairman of selectors officially announced Shubman Gill's coronation as India's 37th Test captain, making the 25-year-old the fifth youngest to occupy the hottest sporting seat in the country.
Gill is already a semi-veteran, if you like, with 108 international appearances since his debut in a One-Day International in Hamilton in January 2019. Ahead of Season 17 of the Indian Premier League, he didn't have a great deal of captaincy experience but in the last 14 months, he has evolved as an excellent leader of men at Gujarat Titans, where he has handled superstars and emerging heroes from India and overseas with aplomb and empathy.
One of the more important but less acknowledged traits in a good leader is the ability to walk in their colleagues' shoes. That's something Gill is certain to have picked up from Rohit Sharma, his predecessor who walked away into the Test sunset earlier this month after three years in charge. The sign of a good student is the willingness and the ability to learn from others while sticking to their own natural grain. In his six years at the highest level, Gill has shown himself to be a quick learner, though he must now learn on the job, and even more quickly, as he embarks on an exciting but unquestionably arduous new chapter.
First task
The Punjab batter's immediate challenge is a five-Test tour of England starting in less than a month's time. In more than 90 years, India have won only three series in that country – famously in 1971 under Ajit Wadekar when they completed the West Indies-England double in less than six months, under Kapil Dev in 1986 and then in 2007 when Rahul Dravid emulated Wadekar by backing up a 1-0 triumph in the Caribbean a year previously with a similar result in England.
As if that statistic isn't daunting enough, Gill must make do without three formidable pillars of Indian cricket, who all retired from the five-day game within five months of each other. Off-spinner supreme R. Ashwin pulled the plug on his international career in Brisbane in December, while Rohit's retirement was followed five days later by Virat Kohli's, a development of seismic magnitude whose import will become obvious in the next several weeks.
Even with these stalwarts, India couldn't put it past England in the latter's backyard. It will therefore be unrealistic to expect Gill to wave a magic wand and get the job done, especially in his maiden foray as the Test captain. In that regard, there is a little less pressure on Gill than there has been on any Indian captain for a long time now. The 25-year-old is an investment for the long term and the principal decision-makers will be indulgent enough for him to make mistakes and learn from them, but they are within their rights to hope for him to repay the faith they have placed in his leadership abilities.
In various quarters, K.L. Rahul was viewed as a possible Rohit successor. There is no little merit in that line of thought; the 33-year-old from Bengaluru has captained the country in all three formats and has plenty of cricket left in him, apart from being the senior-most specialist batter in the Test squad. For some reason, the theory that Rahul would be a 'stop-gap' skipper gathered pace. Gill was the beneficiary of that perception because, at eight years younger, he is seen as a more viable longer term option.
Never mind. That ship has sailed. Gill is the Test captain and now there is no scope/necessity for and merit in nitpicking. He will require all the support he can get when he first walks out for the toss with Ben Stokes at Leeds' Headingley on June 20, aware that he is carrying a heavy load on his shoulders but also that a rare honour has been conferred on him and that he has the opportunity now to take his team to special things.
Young and dynamic duo
By naming Rishabh Pant as Gill's deputy, Agarkar and his fellow band of wise men have installed a young and dynamic leadership duo to take the team forward, convinced that both have the wherewithal to look after not just their own cricket but also the others around them.
There is no shortage of experience or wisdom even in the absence of the Rohit-Kohli-Ashwin triumvirate. Gill will benefit from the sagacity of the unflappable Rahul and the incomparable Jasprit Bumrah, both not just exceptional cricketers but also committed team men. Bumrah would have been the front-runner for the captaincy if, one suspects, this was a three- rather than a five-Test series. His body, especially his back which has been ravaged by injuries, needs to be handled with care and the opinion of the medical staff is that he shouldn't be playing in all five Tests in England.
That being the case, to make him the captain wasn't practical. Bumrah has led India in three Tests previously and hasn't done a shabby job of it, but his bowling is far too valuable for captaincy to throw a spanner in the works, a point acknowledged both by the champion himself and Agarkar's panel.
Gill has come in for great praise from those who have played alongside and under him at the Titans. He has undoubtedly benefited from the nous and intelligence of Ashish Nehra, the head coach who sometimes gives the impression of leading from the sidelines, and evolved as a deep thinker of the game. From the time Rohit sat himself out of the Sydney Test at the start of the year owing to poor form, Gill was perceived as his successor. He was sounded out by head coach Gautam Gambhir and Agarkar and wasn't just receptive to the possibility of taking over as the skipper, he was positively excited at that prospect.
Now that he has the job, Gill's focus will be two-fold – to get his colleagues to give off their best and play with flair and substance, sure, but also to ensure that his own bat catches fire. For all his brilliance in Asia, Gill outside the subcontinent is a massive underachiever. His first Test series, in Australia in 2020-21, was a standout success, the highlight a classy 91 that set up India's successful chase of 328 at the Gabbatoir in January 2021.
But since then, he has failed to make an impression in the so-called SENA – South Africa, England, New Zealand, Australia – countries or in the Caribbean, where he voluntarily dropped down to No. 3 in July 2023. In his last 18 innings in these five lands, he has a highest of 36; his overall Test average is 35.05 from 32 matches. Gill is aware, more than anyone else, that these numbers must change, rapidly. He has seen from close quarters, especially when Rohit was in charge, the virtues of leading by example.
Batting position
Where Gill will bat is a subject of much conjecture. Agarkar left the door open when it came to the batting order by saying that was a call for Gill and Gambhir to make. Until Headingley transpires, it must be assumed that Gill will drop one slot down to No. 4, occupied in the immediate past by Kohli and for nearly two decades before that by Sachin Tendulkar. On its own, without the crown on his head, that is a daunting responsibility but Gill has shown in this IPL, more than ever before, that he thrives under pressure and responsibility.
Gill has a reasonably inexperienced batting group to work with. Abhimanyu Easwaran and B. Sai Sudharsan haven't played a Test, while Karun Nair returns to the fold after eight years in the wilderness. While there is a more solid look to the bowling even in the absence of the overlooked Mohammed Shami, India's batting has seldom looked as undercooked going into a major – any? – Test tour. As such, Gill will feel the need to pull his weight, with no little help from Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rahul, Pant and Ravindra Jadeja, among others.
It's when things don't go to plan that Gill's poise and composure will be tested. A good leader doesn't allow his inner panic to come to the surface because there is nothing more demoralising for players than a captain looking lost and bereft of ideas. He will be sorely tested, make no mistake, by Stokes' England, who scored at more than five and a half runs an over during their innings victory over Zimbabwe in a four-day Test in Nottingham which ended on Saturday. Under the Stokes-Brendon McCullum management group, England have gone about redefining Test match batting, and if the likes of Ben Duckett, Zak Crawley, Ollie Pope, Harry Brook, Joe Root and the skipper himself get cracking, the headaches for any fielding captain will snowball alarmingly.
Gill will find himself at the receiving end quite a few times, of that there is no doubt. That's where he will hope for Bumrah to rouse himself into battle but as superhuman as he might appear, there's also only that much that Bumrah can do. Gill's task will be to get the best out of the others, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna and Kuldeep Yadav included, so that it doesn't become Bumrah and the rest; only time will tell whether Gill is a bowlers' captain.
Unlike some shackled by the cares of captaincy, Gill revels in that role. He won't don the skipper's hat (helmet?) when he is batting, which is just as well because there are so many other things to consider with bat in hand. He might be able to control his batting, but how he runs the ship when his side is in the field will provide some indication of what the future holds for India. And their newest Test captain.