BREAKING: Shubman Gill named as India's new Test skipper, set to begin the stint with upcoming England Tests

In the ongoing press conference, Ajit Agarkar, who is the head of the selection committee, has announced that Shubman Gill will be leading India in the upcoming Test assignment against England which is set to begin from June 20.

Shubman Gill has never captained India in Test cricket

The 25-year-old has never captained the Indian team before in the longest format. He has so far played 32 Tests, scoring 1893 runs and maintaining an average of 35.05.

The last time that Gill was Indian team's captain in international cricket was back in 2024 when the Men in Blue toured Zimbabwe for a five-match T20I series. He was also named vice-captain for the Men in Blue's white-ball tour against Sri Lanka, but was never even given the role of deputy in red-ball cricket.

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"We discussed every option that's there, over the last year or so, we've looked at Shubman at various times. Taken a lot of feedback from the dressing room. Very young, but there's been improvement. We're hopeful he's the guy. He's a terrific player, our best wishes to him," Agarkar stated at the press conference.

"You don't pick captains for one tour or two tours. We've seen some progress over the last year or two with him. No doubt it's going to be as tough as it gets," Agarkar added.

Gill's first assignment as Test skipper will be quite an important one as not only will the five-match tour against England be a gruelling one, but will also mark the beginning of the World Test Championship (WTC).

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The 25-year-old's performance in India's previous Test series against Australia proved to be quite disappointing as he was only able to put up 93 runs with the bat in the five innings he played.

With the captaincy duties now on his shoulders, Gill will be looking to drastically improve his batting performance in the series against England as following Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma's Test retirements, the new Test captain is now among the senior-most players in the team. So, it is inevitable that the team management will now be expecting far more from him than they were in India's previous Test assignments.