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Former England white ball captain Jos Buttler who featured for Shubman Gill-led Gujarat Titans in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025, opened up on his leadership skills ahead of the upcoming Test series. Gill has been appointed as Rohit Sharma's successor to lead India in whites, following the T20 World Cup 2024-winning captain's announcement of his Test retirement in May.
Gill's first Test assignment as captain will be the upcoming five-Test match series against England, which is scheduled to start from June 20. Ahead of the series, Buttler said that the 25-year-old will need to find a balance between his captaincy role and his own batting.
"He's a really impressive player and an impressive young man," Buttler said on his podcast 'For The Love of Cricket' alongside former England pacer Stuart Broad.
"He's pretty calm and measured when he speaks, but (it's) interesting, I feel like on the field he's got a bit of fight about him; a bit of intensity, quite passionate. I think he'll be a mix of Kohli and Rohit.
"Kohli (was) that sort of real aggressive (character), really transformed the Indian team, in your face, up for the contest. Rohit was a bit on the other side, a bit more laid back, very cool, calm, collected customer, but with that sort of fight," he added.
"He's obviously learned from those two guys… but he'll be very much his own man." Buttler said the job of captaining India in Test cricket is like being a "third or fourth-most influential people" in the country "He talked about compartmentalising batting and captaining; so when he's batting he just wants to be a batter, and then he will try and work on his captaincy and try and separate the two roles," he said.
"I don't think we can quite understand the level of interest and the stardom that these guys have. You see it around the IPL, you're aware of it, but actually living that yourself... I think they say the Indian Test captain is like the third or fourth-most influential person in India, behind the Prime Minister, so you really are put up on that pedestal.
"(There are a) one-and-half billion people, all cricket-mad, so it's going to be a huge job for him. Kohli is the king, Shubman is the prince: that's the narrative that they spin out there, and I feel that he's the coming man...Stepping into that No. 4, it's big shoes, isn't it?"
India squad for England series
Shubman Gill(C), Rishabh Pant(vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Karun Nair, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jurel, Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Parishdh Krishna, Akashdeep, Arshdeep Singh, Kuldeep Yadav
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