{"id":5203,"date":"2025-08-14T12:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T12:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/14\/shubman-gill-as-indias-future-t20-captain-3-reasons-why-it-can-backfire-cricket-news\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T12:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T12:24:07","slug":"shubman-gill-as-indias-future-t20-captain-3-reasons-why-it-can-backfire-cricket-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/14\/shubman-gill-as-indias-future-t20-captain-3-reasons-why-it-can-backfire-cricket-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Shubman Gill As India’s Future T20 Captain? 3 Reasons Why It Can Backfire | Cricket News"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Shubman Gill is ridiculously talented, in form, and has proven that he can lead India — but is that good enough to give him T20 vice-captaincy?<\/h2>\n
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Shubman Gill has replaced Rohit Sharma as India’s Test captain (Picture Credit: AP)<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Format-mixing has become a common concept in Indian men\u2019s team selections.<\/p>\n

Whenever a player is in great form, selectors tend to pick him for the next international rubber, irrespective of\u00a0where\u00a0<\/em>the form was on display. For example, Suryakumar Yadav\u2019s Test and ODI debuts came after his excellent returns in the IPL and T20Is, but he couldn\u2019t succeed in the former two.<\/p>\n

The concept of all-format superstars always seems more prevalent in India than in other countries. There\u2019s a sense of privilege in representing the team in all formats, and those who manage to do it together without affecting their performances, like Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni, get into immediate \u2018GOAT\u2019 debates.<\/p>\n

Shubman Gill is just the next in line. Fresh from success in England, both with the bat and his captaincy, there\u2019s talk of him getting into India\u2019s T20I team. Curiously, it\u2019s not about whether he deserves to be in the Asia Cup squad in September or not, but whether he could be the vice-captain to cement his path as the heir of Suryakumar, who\u2019s the undroppable incumbent but 34 years old.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s merit to the theory as Gill\u2019s coming off an excellent year in the IPL, too, but there are several concerns associated that can make the move backfire, as well.<\/p>\n

Reason 1: India have a settled top-order<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It\u2019s the age-old dilemma: should you pick the best captain first and build a team around it, or should you pick the best 11 and choose a captain from that? Gill might have the credentials as the best primed (age-wise) and perhaps even the most tactically sound leader (it\u2019s subjective), but as a player, his case is wobbly.<\/p>\n

India have Abhishek Sharma and Sanju Samson in Gill\u2019s preferred opening spot. Sharma is the ICC\u2019s top-ranked T20I batter with good reason, while Sanju is not too behind and is coming off three centuries in the format not too long ago. Gill hasn\u2019t played any T20Is since 2024.<\/p>\n

Alongside Gill, Sharma and Samson have been among the best openers in the IPL for a while, but have done that with a more high-risk, high-intent way of batting. That\u2019s increasingly the way to go in the format.<\/p>\n

Though Gill pushed his strike-rate beyond 150 in IPL 2025 and was one of the best run-accumulators to watch in action, he didn\u2019t do anything to push past the settled duo of Sharma and Samson. Stability is cited as one of the reasons why single all-format captaincy work, and with just a few months to go to the 2026 T20 World Cup, putting Gill as an opener could bring serious stability problems.<\/p>\n

Even at number three, India have a settled choice in Tilak Varma, who has done nothing wrong to be replaced months before a major ICC tournament. As far as replacements go, Yashasvi Jaiswal has had better and more consistent performances than Gill over the past several seasons of the IPL, and if an injury reserve is picked, he\u2019d deserve to be higher than the Test skipper in the pecking order.<\/p>\n

Reason 2: Giving Shubman Gill leadership might cause friction<\/strong><\/h2>\n

If Gill is still brought into the team to ease him in as the vice-captain and hope he\u2019ll be ready to take over from Suryakumar when needed, then it\u2019ll likely cause some friction within the team.<\/p>\n

In the Test team, he was a clear choice: Jasprit Bumrah had workload concerns, KL Rahul didn\u2019t have too many years to give, Jaiswal was raw, Rishabh Pant hadn\u2019t proved himself as captain at any level, and the team was young enough to absorb a new personality of leadership. None of these conditions is met in T20s.<\/p>\n

Bumrah, Hardik Pandya (31), Samson (30), and even the current vice-captain, Axar Patel (31), are in their prime and have good cases to be Suryakumar\u2019s deputy. If any of them have the ambition to lead India, too, they can\u2019t be faulted for being upset seeing someone not in the team for a year appointed the deputy ahead of them.<\/p>\n

If Suryakumar can lead for the next two years and one of Axar, Samson, and Pandya can do three more after that, succession is a problem for 2030. Thinking about the future is important, but not at the cost of the present.<\/p>\n

Reason 3: No proof that one-man captaincy works<\/strong><\/h2>\n

There\u2019s perhaps no place where split captaincy faced as much antagonism as India. Here, arguably because of how all the best captains have been strong personalities, it\u2019s hard to fathom a sharing of responsibilities.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s no actual proof that one-man captaincy is better than a split. MS Dhoni was successful in that role, but Virat Kohli didn\u2019t win any ICC trophies as a captain. Rohit Sharma won both the 2024 T20 World Cup and the 2025 Champions Trophy, but under him, India got whitewashed in Tests at home for the first time, and he was not leading his IPL teams at the same time, unlike Kohli and, likely in the future, Gill.<\/p>\n

Even coaches like Rahul Dravid, who were overseeing all formats, and now Gautam Gambhir need breaks when they don\u2019t even go out in the field, just because of how packed cricket\u2019s calendar is for India. With an ICC tournament slated for every year, it will be bound to be exhausting for anyone with that much responsibility and affect their batting. What worked in Tests might not work in T20Is.<\/p>\n

If you give them a rest, will the vice-captain be one for all formats, or will that be fine as a split? There\u2019s no right answer.<\/p>\n

All the concerns about split captaincy are communication-based: what if the ODI and T20I captains want the same player, and they can only play one series? Selectors and coaches step in to decide what\u2019s best for the country. A humongous risk with burdening a stunningly talented 25-year-old with the nation\u2019s responsibility is not that he won\u2019t do his best to fulfill it, but that he will, and it won\u2019t be enough.<\/p>\n

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A team of reporters, writers and editors brings you news, analyses, features, live scores, results, stats and everything that\u2019s cricket from all over the globe. Follow @cricketnext<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Last Updated:August 14, 2025, 17:32 IST Shubman Gill is ridiculously talented, in form, and has proven that he can lead India — but is that good enough to give him T20 vice-captaincy? Shubman Gill has replaced Rohit Sharma as India’s Test captain (Picture Credit: AP) Format-mixing has become a common concept in Indian men\u2019s team…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cricket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}