With Virat Kohli’s retirement, the No.4 spot in the Indian Test team has a lot of speculations going around it on who could take the place of the star India batter. Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting feels that captain Shubman Gill will be the ideal candidate for the role due to the added responsibility of captaincy in the upcoming England tour.
“…the reason I did that was if they go with (Yashasvi) Jaiswal, and if Sai Sudarshan is the other opener, they need someone a bit more experienced at number three. So that could be either, KL at three, or that could be a Karun Nair at three and Shubman at four….once you grow into it, then you can move yourself back up to that number three spot,” Ponting said.
Last month, Gill, who played his first Test for India just five years ago, was selected as the candidate to lead the team into a new era after he was named the captain for the five-match series in England, starting June 20.
In what ultimately proved to be a formality, Gill was named as Rohit Sharma’s successor following a meeting of the selection committee at the cricket board headquarters at Wankhede Stadium. Gill will be India’s 37th Test captain. His deputy for the England tour will be Rishabh Pant.
Rohit announced his retirement from red-ball cricket last month. Weeks later, former captain Kohli, too, hung his whites. Both veterans have chosen to continue playing the 50-over format.
Meanwhile, Ponting also said that it was the right time for Sai Sudharsan to make his debut in the Test team and open with Yashasvi Jaiswal against England.
“I think the time’s right for Sudarshan to come into the side, to be honest. There’s a bit of a regeneration that’s going to happen around this Indian team now, obviously with Rohit and Virat not there,” he said.
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“Every team goes through that…seems to me like Sudarshan’s ready. Lots of first class runs, his IPL form this year has been probably better than anybody else,” he pointed out about the Orange Cap winner of the just-concluded season. Technically, seems fine. And, you know, KL down in the middle order somewhere probably just gives that bit more stability,” he added.
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