24-05-2025
Jasprit Bumrah knows why he is not the India Test captain: Ajit Agarkar
India named Shubman Gill as the new Test captain of the Indian cricket team on Saturday, May 24. Gill was the winner of the three-way race between him, Jasprit Bumrah, and Rishabh Pant. Bumrah, who captained India in the recently concluded Border-Gavaskar Trophy, was snubbed from the selector Ajit Agarkar addressed the issue and explained why Bumrah was not named the India Test captain. Agarkar said that the Indian Cricket Board wanted Bumrah to focus on his workload issues, rather than taking the additional burden of Test further added that the decision was communicated to Bumrah, and the fast bowler was okay with the explanation given to him by the board.
"Because he led in Australia, Bumrah was the vice-captain (in BGT 2024-25). Once he was not going to be available for all the Test matches, I think he is more important to us as a player. We want him fit. I think there is always that extra burden as a leader, managing 15–16 other people. There's a lot that it takes out of you. We would rather have him bowling well rather than putting that extra burden on him," Agarkar said in the press conference in Mumbai."He is aware of it. We have had a chat with him. And he is okay with it. He knows where his body is at the moment and he'd rather look after himself," he Bumrah played all five matches in Australia and copped a major back injury, which sidelined him for more than three months. Bumrah has a history of back injuries, which has forced him to skip several international tournaments for if KL Rahul was in contention for becoming the captain of the side, Agarkar firmly quashed the idea. He said that Rahul had captained the Indian team more than two years back and he was never in the reckoning."With KL, not really (no conversations). He has captained a while back, at least when I was not there. Again, he is a quality player, it's a big series for him, we want him to score truckloads of runs. With Boom, again it was workload management more than anything else," he Saturday, India named their 18-member squad for 5-match Test series against England. Shubman Gill was named the captain, while Rishabh Pant was given the position of Squad for England TourShubman Gill (captain), Rishabh Pant (wk) (vice-captain), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Karun Nair, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jurel (wk), Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Arshdeep Singh, Kuldeep Watch
