Srinagar: Former Australia cricketer Ricky Ponting has backed Shubman Gill as the perfect choice for the India Test captaincy , giving his reasoning in the process.
Two of India’s greatest batters in Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli announced their retirement from the longest format earlier this month, with a new era of Indian cricket to be ushered in when the side travels to Europe in June for a five-match ICC World Test Championship series against England under the leadership of Gill.
The decision to hand Gill the captaincy ahead of more senior players like Jasprit Bumrah or Rishabh Pant did not surprise Ponting, with the Australian legend believing the 25-year-old can flourish in the role at Test level.
“I actually think it’s the right move,” Ponting told The ICC Review regarding the decision to hand Gill the role as India Test captain.
“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.
“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 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 a good crack at it for, for a long period of time.
“Even just looking back at the way he’s handled this current GT (Gujarat Titans) team through this IPL, I think leadership sits really well with him.
“And the important thing for me with leadership as well as if you’re a batter and you’re a captain, you have to be scoring runs. And Shubman is doing that in IPL and I think the timing is right and I think you’ll have a good captain who’ll make a lot of Test runs going forward.”
Just where Gill is best placed to bat in India’s potent batting lineup is still up for debate, with the talented right-hander having been used as an opener or No.3 during all of his first 32 Test match appearances.
But Ponting thinks India may get the best out of Gill if they drop him down to No.4 just to alleviate a bit of pressure against the new ball.
“I think (Sai) Sudarshan and (Yashasvi) Jaiswal will open the batting (in England) as Sudarshan just looks like a class player to me and technically I think he could do well at Test level,” Ponting said.
“They’ll have two pretty young opening batters, so they might look to go for someone that’s got a bit more experience at No.3.
“Whether that’s KL (Rahul) or Karun (Nair) at No.3, and then Shubman might end up being that No.4 player, which will probably make life for him a little bit easier as a captain as well.
“Not having to be opening or batting at No.3 as a young captain might make it easier. Their top five will probably be Sudarshan, Jaiswal, KL, Gill and Karun Nair for the start of the England series.”
Ponting knows replacing the experience of Rohit and Kohli at Test level will be hard to do, but thinks India are as well placed as any nation to do so given their rich wealth of quality players at their disposal.
“It’s always very hard to replace players like that 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 noted.
“I’ve seen it first hand for 10 years now around the IPL and we’ve seen the emergence of Jaiswal and these sort of guys that have come into international cricket with India and done really well pretty much straight away.
“The skill side of it’s one thing to replace and I think 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. So 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 I think if you look at a rebuilding sort of phase, I think India can cope with it better than most other teams.”
India Test squad for England: Shubman Gill (c), Rishabh Pant (vc, wk), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudarshan, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Karun Nair, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jurel, Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Arshdeep Singh, Kuldeep Yadav.