With Shubman Gill smashing a match winning dazzling ton against Bangladesh, he might have done justice to his vice-captain tag. India though is missing Jasprit Bumrah who wasn’t fit after his gruelling Australia Tests. It won’t be wrong to say that Jasprit Bumrah single handedly has been carrying the burden of nation with his fiery spells & leadership over last year or so.
Jasprit Bumrah was in the form of his life against Australia in BGT 2024-25 when he took 32 wickets & was ruthless. Jasprit Bumrah is also tipped to be the next Test captain as his tactics were spot on. India’s next red ball assignment is against England in June 2025 where the Dukes ball swings and he can be a nightmare for English batters.
Jasprit Bumrah will become the natural choice to lead India- Anil Kumble
Anil Kumble was having an interaction with ESPNcricinfo. Anil Kumble pointed out that even if Shubman Gill is the vice-captain, Jasprit Bumrah would be the automatic choice to lead India. Anil Kumble also pointed out that Jasprit Bumrah’s workload should be carefully managed and make sure that he is fit for important tournaments.
“Shubman is already in the leadership group, and eventually he will get to that captaincy. Now whether it will be immediately after Rohit leaves one-day cricket, or else Bumrah will come in, which is the automatic choice both for Test match cricket and the ODI format, because you hardly play ODIs now,” said Anil Kumble.
“If you look at white-ball cricket, although the next World Cup is 2027, in between 2023 and now, we have hardly played one-day cricket. It’s mostly been T20 format, where Suryakumar Yadav is already the captain. So, when you look at ODI format, to sort of look at Bumrah, and preserve him because he is very valuable, and try to utilize him for important tournaments. So, I think Bumrah will become the natural choice, but Shubman won’t be far behind,” he added.
Questions aplenty for selectors
Indian cricket is going through a transition especially if we look in the middle order. Shreyas Iyer is also a contender to lead India given how successful he has been in domestic winning every another championship. Shreyas Iyer played a pivotal role in ICC ODI WC 2023 where he amassed 530 runs & even against recently concluded ODI series against England, he looked magnificent.
It will be interesting to see who is the successor of Rohit Sharma in ODIs & Tests as in T20Is Suryakumar Yadav has done a formidable job so far. KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Shubman Gill & Jasprit Bumrah all are in the fray to be the next captain of ODI & Tests. It looks highly unlikely that the selectors will go with 3 different captains for 3 different formats given it hasn’t happened before at all in Indian cricket.