DOMESTIC CRICKET

Gambhir’s captaincy picks are Hardik Pandya and Prithvi Shaw for India in the future

Hardik Pandya

In a recent event in New Delhi on Sunday, Gautam Gambhir picked his future captaincy options for India.

The first of these is Hardik Pandya who at present is leading the Indian side in T20Is in the absence of Rohit Sharma.

Along with Pandya, Gambhir took the surprise name of Prithvi Shaw which raised quite a few eyebrows.

Pandya has been a great T20I skipper for India in recent history and has even led debutants Gujarat Titans to a win in this year’s IPL.

He has also picked up a lot of captaincy experience in the process and looks all set to replace Rohit Sharma in the future.

However, Gambhir feels that Rohit should not be judged so early after playing just one ICC tournament as skipper.

Hardik Pandya obviously is in line. But that’s going to be unfortunate for Rohit because I think judging his captaincy in only one ICC event is not the right way to probably judge him.

Meanwhile, Prithvi Shaw has been struggling to make it to India’s second-string squads since last year.

Gambhir has not specified in which format he wants to see Shaw as India’s captain.

Along with the loss of form, Shaw has been coping with more problems. Ever since his doping violation in 2019, Shaw’s fitness and lifestyle issues have come under the scanner.

Again in March this year, Shaw failed a yo-yo test and scored less than 15.

Shaw’s last series for India was in 2021 against Sri Lanka in July.

Says Gambhir,

The reason I’ve picked Prithvi Shaw, I know a lot of people talk about his off-field activities, but that is what the job of the coach and the selectors are. The selectors’ job isn’t to pick the 15, but also to get people walk the right path.

More recently, Shaw has made some appearances for Mumbai in the domestic circuit.

However, his form in the ongoing Vijay Hazare Trophy is not up to the mark as well.

His fellow batter Yashasvi Jaiswal has made 396 runs in six matches to top the run charts for Mumbai.

The team exited the tournament in the pre-quarterfinals.

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