Later this year, the Indian men’s cricket team is poised to travel to Australia for a five-match Test series. On November 22, 2024-25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy will start in Perth and next four matches will be played at Adelaide (D/N), Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney respectively. India has won the last two Test series played in Australia and this time it aims at clinching the hat-trick. However, with strong Australians being on top of ICC Test Rankings currently, achieving this target is not easy.
During previous two Test tours of Australia, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane contributed greatly to Indian success but their absence from red-ball team makes it unlikely that they’ll make the trip down under again.
Dinesh Karthik, former Indian wicketkeeper-batter, spoke about Pujara and Rahane’s replacements in the Team India for Australia tour during a recent Q/A session on Cricbuzz’s HeyCB with DK show. He mentioned Shubman Gill and Sarfaraz Khan’s names.
Karthik said that Gill and Sarfaraz performed extraordinarily well during the five-match Test series against England at home earlier this year and would definitely be flying to Australia. In his opinion, both young players are capable of filling the big shoes and will attempt their best.
“Shubman Gill and Sarfaraz Khan are two players who just do not stop performing when they play against Englishmen at home like during the recent series. I have a gut feeling that this time they will be on their way to Australia, trying their best as batsmen. If they can step up as replacements for Ajinkya and Pujji (Pujara), we’ll know soon enough. Filling such shoes is no easy task, but their quality speaks for itself,” Karthik stated.
Gill was part of team India during the 2020-21 Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Australia. He scored more runs than any other Indian in the second innings of the game at Brisbane Test which saw India win by 3 wickets by chasing down 328 runs target on last day of this match.
