Top 3 Players To Replace Rohit Sharma As Test Captain: It was announced earlier today that Rohit Sharma will be retiring from Test cricket. Throughout the day, leaks and rumours suggested that Rohit would be stripped of the Indian Cricket Team’s red ball captaincy. So, in the evening, he announced his retirement from the format, and as a result, the team will have to choose a new captain.
Having made his Test debut in 2013 against the West Indies, Sharma followed Virat Kohli as the captain in 2022, facing and defeating Sri Lanka by an innings in his Test captaincy debut. In the 24 red-ball matches he captained the national team in, The Hitman has won 12, lost nine, and drawn three games.
Rohit will be retiring from Test cricket after 67 matches, in which he played 116 innings and scored 4301 runs at an average of 40.57 with 12 100s and 18 50s.
But now, the Indian Cricket Team will be looking for a new Test captain. Only three people emerge as realistic choices for this job. So today, we will look at the top 3 players to replace Rohit Sharma as captain in Test cricket.
Top 3 Players To Replace Rohit Sharma As Test Captain
3) Virat Kohli
Choosing Virat Kohli as the captain of the Indian Test team will be like taking a step back. This does not mean that Kohli is not a great leader and skipper. But Virat has already captained the Test team for seven years, from 2014 to 2021. So if he is chosen to lead the side, the team will be going back a step, the one they took in 2022.
Virat Kohli is the most successful Test captain in the history of Indian cricket. In the 68 matches he led the side for, Virat won 40 games, with a winning percentage of 58.82 and a win/loss ratio of 2.35. Also, nobody has captained the Test side for more matches than he has.
Kohli is the senior-most player currently in the national team, so picking him to lead the side for a few years while the team looks for the next long-term leader will be a viable option.
Check Out: Top 3 Players To Replace Rohit Sharma As Captain
2) Jasprit Bumrah
Jasprit Bumrah is the best bowler in the world at the moment. The ICC Men’s Cricketer of the Year 2024 has shown in the past two years that he is consistently amazing across formats in any type of condition in the world. Making the best player on the team (and probably the world) the next Test captain makes sense.
However, the only issue with Bumrah possibly being the next skipper is his availability. The sheer quality and ability have an unfortunate trade-off, that being Jasprit being injury-prone. Being the Test captain is a massive workload, especially for the upcoming five-match tour to pace-haven England. So, being fit enough to play and lead the team for all the games on tour throughout the year will be challenging for him.
Jasprit Bumrah has captained the team in a few Test matches here and there in the past and thus has some experience in leading the side.
1) Shubman Gill
The tradition of the next great Indian batter becoming the Test captain is the oldest custom in Indian cricket. From the likes of Tiger Pataudi to Sunil Gavaskar to Sachin Tendulkar to Virat Kohli, all these men have been the captain of the Indian Cricket Team in Test cricket at some point or another. With many people seeing Shubman Gill as the next man in the lineage of great Indian batters, it is only natural that he now takes up the mantle of Test captaincy.
The Indian vice-captain in Tests, Gill, might not have had the best start to his Test career. But he has shown that he is among the most technically sound batters in world cricket. Shubman has shown his ability to be a match-winner on the international stage on many occasions, especially in ODIs, where he has an average of 59.
In Tests, Shubman Gill had 1893 runs in 32 matches and 59 innings at an average of 35.05. However, it is also true that he has some decent captaincy experience at the highest level. Gill has not only been the skipper of the Indian Cricket Team on certain tours across formats, but he is also currently leading the Gujarat Titans in IPL 2025 and is taking the team right into the playoffs.
Check Out: Top 3 Players To Replace Rohit Sharma As Captain
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