The Indian Test team will be captained by Shubman Gill in the upcoming five-match Test series against England which is set to commence from June 20. The series will be quite important for both the sides as it will also mark the beginning of the new World Test Championship (WTC) cycle.
This will be one of if not Gill's toughest assignment in his career so far as the onus will be on him to do well both as a leader and as a batter. A reason why this series will be quite tough for the Men in Blue is because of the fact that they will be without the duo of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, who recently announced their retirements from the longest format.
Gill to bat at number four in England series?
Ahead of the all-important series, former India cricketer Deep Dasgupta believes that Gill should replace Kohli's position in the batting order and should step out to bat at the number four spot against England.
"From here on, we'll be seeing Shubman Gill 2.0 – in a different position. I’ve always believed that in Test match cricket, the middle order – and now specifically number four – is the right place for him. Earlier, I used to say 'middle order' because we didn't realise Virat would step away from the format this early. But now that the spot has opened up, I think number four is the perfect place for Shubman in red-ball cricket," Dasgupta said on Star Sports.
He pointed out that Gill's Test record before the upcoming series doesn't quite matter to him as in those matches, the 25-year-old either batted as an opener or at number three.
"So, in a way, this is going to be a rebirth of Shubman Gill – the red-ball player, the red-ball batter. I’m not too concerned about the numbers from before, because as I said, those were from when he was opening or batting at number three. Technically, he is much better suited to number four, or the middle order, in Test cricket," Dasgupta stated.
Gill, who has never captained the Indian team in red-ball cricket before, has so far played a total of 32 Tests in his career, scoring 1893 runs including seven half-centuries and five centuries. The batter has maintained a decent average of 35.05 in the format and has the highest individual score of 128.
India squad for England series: Shubman Gill (C), Rishabh Pant (VC & WK), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Karun Nair, Nitish Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jurel (WK), Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd. Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Arshdeep Singh, Kuldeep Yadav.