Published: Jun 07, 2025, 06:07 PM (IST)
Edited: Jun 07, 2025, 06:10 PM (IST)
Indian Test team has witnessed a shift to a new era as new players have been named in the team. This transition comes as experienced players R Ashwin, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli retired from the format. The Indian team is touring England as of now, and will play a five-match series from June 20. This series will begin World Test Championship (WTC) 2025-27 campaign for both the teams.
Before the series begins, Australian legend Ricky Ponting has said that Shubman Gill being given the leadership role for the series is a great move, and that the youngster can handle the ongoing transition phase in a much-better way as compared to how any other country might have handled this big of a change.
“I actually think it’s the right move. 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,” Ponting told The ICC Review.
“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 the right decision. Now that they’ve made it, it’s one they’ve got to stick with and give him (Gill) a good crack at it for a long period of time,” he said.
Ponting said that it is going to be significantly tough for the team with new players stepping up in place of veteran players, but has stated that India should be able to handle this transition phase in a much better way as compared to any other Test-playing team
“It’s always very hard to replace players like that, (given) 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 said.
“I’ve seen it first hand for 10 years now around the IPL and we’ve seen the emergence of (Yashasvi) Jaiswal and these sort of guys that have come into international cricket with India and (have) done really well pretty much straight away.”
“The skill side of it’s one thing to replace and 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. 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 if you look at a rebuilding sort of phase, India can cope with it better than most other teams,” he concluded.
Complete squad:
Shubman Gill (C), Rishabh Pant (VC/wk), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudarshan, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Karun Nair, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jurel (wk), Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Arshdeep Singh, Kuldeep Yadav
