India's newly appointed Test captain, Shubman Gill, is currently in England preparing for his first red-ball assignment as a skipper, which is scheduled to start from June 20. Team India are scheduled to play a five-Test match series, and on the eve of the first clash at Headingley, Gill said that he was prepared to play even four tailenders to pick up 20 wickets as quickly as possible.
While attending media ahead of the first clash, Gill also opened up on his decision to replace Virat Kohli as India's new No.4 on the batting order. The 25-year-old stated that he came to the big decision after having a discussion with head coach Gautam Gambhir.
ALSO READ: 'Lot said about no Rohit, no Virat and no Ashwin, that doesn't mean...': Ben Stokes fed up with debate around absence of India's big-wigs in 5-match Test series
"Yes, definitely." Gill said in response to the question. "You can't win a Test match without taking 20 wickets, no matter how many runs you have scored. So, that has been one of our key discussion points, you know, how we're gonna take 20 wickets. And there might be a case, you know, where we could only be going with some pure batters and you could see a bowling allrounder and three to four premier fast bowlers or proper bowlers," said Gill in a pre-match press conference.
“Captaining the country is the biggest honour anyone can get. After Virat bhai retired, me and GG bhai had a discussion about me batting at that number," Gill stated.
The upcoming five-Test match series against England will see India kick off a brand-new era in Test cricket. The upcoming Test series will be India's first red-ball assignment after the back-to-back retirements of Ravichandran Ashwin, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli from the longest format of the game. England have already announced their playing XI, and India will announce their XI during the toss of the first Test match.
England's Playing XI: Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ben Stokes (C), Jamie Smith (WK), Chris Woakes, Brydon Carse, Josh Tongue, Shoaib Bashir.
India squad for England Tests: Shubman Gill (c), Rishabh Pant (wk), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Karun Nair, Nitish Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jurel (wk), Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammad Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Arshdeep Singh, Kuldeep Yadav, Harshit Rana.