With the T20I retirement of India captain Rohit Sharma after the end of the recently concluded T20 World Cup 2024, which the national side won getting the better of South Africa at the Kensington Oval, in Bridgetown, Barbados, the selectors are looking at a few players who could be the next India captain.
At the moment the current India players who are almost guaranteed of getting a chance in the format for the side, in the coming T20 World Cup 2026, at home and Sri Lanka, there is Suryakumar Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya. Rishabh Pant’s records in T20Is don’t give a positive look at it.
The team, under head coach Gautam Gambhir, will be looking to build a young side and that means with not many seniors being available, the experienced players would be quite vital for the team. Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja too have called their time from the shortest format of the game.
‘Hardik Pandya will be a natural choice’- Jatin Paranjpe on India T20I leadership
The veteran India pace-bowling all-rounder Hardik Pandya has led the team in the past during the times when Rohit used to take breaks in between the formats. In Ireland or during their Caribbean tour, they have the responsibility to the Baroda all-rounder, who has shown his skills in that role.
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Hardik, for sure, didn’t enjoy a great time in the captaincy role for the Mumbai Indians in the recent Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024, where the team finished with the wooden spoon, as the captain found himself under so much heat and criticism in the middle.
However, Pandya showed how cool he has been with the job when he led the Gujrat Titans to the championship in their very first season in 2022, before falling short in the following year as they ended up with the runners-up medal, against the Chennai Super Kings.
Jasprit Bumrah could be the person, who is a sure-shot member of the shortest format or any format of the game for any side around the world, but being a pacer, it’s quite crucial to manage his workload and keep him fresh for the vital games, and that’s the reason why he doesn’t often turn up for India in T20Is, and that could work against him in getting the leadership role.
The former India selector and the Cricket Advisory Committee members Jatin Paranjpe have given these four names for the leadership role and how the management and the players themselves need to work for this.
‘Hardik Pandya will be the natural choice (For the coming Sri Lanka tour) with Rishabh Pant likely becoming his vice-captain. But there are four players in the actual captaincy stakes going into the future: Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant, Shreyas Iyer, and KL Rahul.’ Paranjpe expressed this in an exclusive interview with Cricket Next. ‘Let’s not forget that KL Rahul is a fantastic player. There have been some reports about him not being available for ODI cricket. I’m not sure how authentic they are, but he is again a cross-format player.’
He also puts the name of Shreyas Iyer who led the Kolkata Knight Riders to the winning medal in IPL 2024, as Gambhir played the mentor role.
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‘So here are the four names. I think Shreyas Iyer will need to cement his place in the T20 side before he can be thought of as a captain. But here are the four young leaders, and we are seeing them in the IPL as well. So here are the four young leaders, and one of them will be the guy for the long term,’ Jatin concluded.
India is likely to announce the new captain of the two white-ball series in the coming weeks.
