Rohit Sharma can be removed from the post of Test captain, decision will be taken after West Indies tour
The humiliating defeat in the WTC final 2023 against Australia is about to usher in changes in the Indian cricket team. According to the report, Rohit Sharma can be removed from the Test captaincy. Rohit’s last Test series as captain is likely to be the West Indies tour of India, after which, the selectors will discuss a new captaincy option ahead of the tour of South Africa.
An out-of-form Rohit can reverse that situation if he scores a significant amount of runs against the West Indies. Rohit will be the Indian captain in the two-Test series in the West Indies. After that he is likely to sit down with the BCCI and decide on his future in the longest format. A BCCI source said about this, ‘These are baseless talks that Rohit will be removed from the captaincy. Yes, will he survive the full two-year WTC cycle is a big question as he will be around 38 when the third edition ends in 2025.
He said, ‘At the moment I believe that Shiv Sundar Das and his colleagues will have to take a call after two Tests and looking at their batting form.’ ‘After the West Indies, we don’t have any Tests until the end of December when the team travels to South Africa. So the selectors have enough time to think and take a decision. By then the fifth selector (new chairman) will also join the panel and a decision can be taken.
Rohit was not very keen on taking over the Test captaincy from Virat Kohli, when he relinquished the captaincy following the series defeat in South Africa. Rohit, battling injuries, did not know whether his body would survive or not. Instead BCCI President Sourav Ganguly and Secretary Jay Shah had to persuade Rohit to take up the responsibility. “Two top people at that time (former president Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah) had to persuade him to take up the role after KL Rahul failed to impress as captain in South Africa,” the source said.
Apart from scoring a brilliant 120 against Australia on a challenging Nagpur track, Rohit hasn’t scored the kind of runs that is expected of him. Rohit took over the Test captaincy in 2022, so India played 10 Tests and he missed three Tests, one in England due to COVID-19 and two in Bangladesh due to split webbing. He scored 390 runs in 7 Tests and averaged 35.45 in 11 completed innings with one hundred and no other score above 50.
In the same phase, Virat Kohli played all 10 Tests, scoring 517 runs with a best of 186 in 17 innings against Australia in Ahmedabad. Cheteshwar Pujara played 8 Tests in the same phase and scored 482 runs in 14 innings at an average of 40.12 with two unbeaten innings. But scores of 90 and 102 came against a weak Bangladesh attack. The selectors know that all three big players may not constitute India’s top-order in the next three years and hence a tough call will be required looking into the future.
