The ICC T20 World Cup trophy was not the only thing that happened on June 29; star players of the Indian cricket team — Virat Kohli and captain Rohit Sharma had both announced their retirement from the format. Soon after, Ravindra Jadeja also announced his retirement for the T20 format. But what does it mean for the Team India who is now without a captain?
Names of Hardik Pandya, Shubman Gill, Jasprit Bumrah and Suryakumar Yadav have been surfacing as speculations about India’s next captain in the T20I format are brewing. However, the all-rounder Hardik Pandya has emerged as the favourite, mostly because he led India in T20Is for the last two years in Rohit’s absence.
But does BCCI president Jay Shah approve of Pandya as India’s next captain for T20I format?
Although suggesting that the ball is in the court of the “selectors” on the matter of who the next captain would be, Jay Shah namedropped the all-rounder.
“You asked about Hardik, there were lot of questions over his form, but we and selectors showed faith in him, and he proved himself,” he said.
“Captaincy will be decided by the selectors and we will announce it after discussing with them,” he added.
‘A good player knows when to say goodbye’
Jay Shah put to rest the speculations that Rohit and Virat’s retirement from the T20I format may put to risk their position in the ODI set-up with the Champions Trophy around with a simple ‘no’.
Not only did the BCCI chief praise the star players, he also lauded the timing of their decision to retire and said, “Experience makes a lot of difference. In World Cups, you can’t experiment much also. A good player knows when to say goodbye to the game, we saw that yesterday. You look at Rohit’s strike rate, it is better than a lot of young players.”
“It was same captain last year and same here in Barbados. We won all games except the final in 2023 as Australia played better. This time we worked even harder and played better to win the title,” Shah added.
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