Batting great Sunil Gavaskar thinks pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah should be India's next captain after Rohit Sharma, given his sensational show with the ball in the recently-concluded Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024-2025. India might have lost the Border-Gavaskar Trophy after a decade but Jasprit Bumrah certainly remained the highlight of the five-match high-octane contest.
Sunil Gavaskar wants Jasprit Bumrah to become India's next captain
Gavaskar said that Bumrah leads from the front and he has got a very good air about him.
“He could be the next man. I think he will be the next man. Because he leads from the front, he has got a very good air about him, the air of a leader but not somebody who is going to pressure on you,” Gavaskar said on Channel 7.
“Sometimes, you have captains who put a lot of pressure on you. With Bumrah you can see that, he expects the others to do what their job is, why they are in the national team, but it doesn’t seem to pressurise anybody,” he added.
The superstar pacer was also adjudged the Player of the Series in Border-Gavaskar Trophy as he was the leading-wicket taker of the series with 32 scalps under his belt.
Bumrah also led Team India twice during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. He captained the side in the first Test in Perth, which India ended up winning by 295 runs and then in the fifth and final Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground after Rohit Sharma opted out of the match. However, this time India lost the match by six wickets which also cost them the series 1-3. Bumrah's contribution in the final Test was cut short. He was only able to bowl in the first innings before being forced to withdraw from the match due to back spasms.
“With the fast bowlers, he has been absolutely brilliant, standing at mid-off, mid-on and every time just being at hand to tell them. I think he was absolutely brilliant and I won’t be surprised if he takes over very soon,” Gavaskar concluded.
More than Bumrah's 32 wickets in the Test series against Australia, the average with which he has picked those wickets tells about his stature. He boasted a bowling average of 13.82 in the five-match outing. The right-handed Indian pacer ripped through the Australian batting line up and kept pestering them throughout the series. His exceptional bowling earned him the top spot in the ICC Test rankings, while also marking a career milestone with his best-ever rating of 908. Not just this, Bumrah also became the fastest Indian pacer to reach 200 wickets in Test cricket.
Since returning from a back injury, Bumrah has unleashed his beast mode. After an injury lay-off of 1.5 years, he left his mark in almost all the big tournaments, be it IPL, Asia Cup 2023, ODI World Cup 2023 and T20 World Cup 2024. In the 2023 ODI World Cup, he picked 25 wickets, finishing as the second-highest wicket-taker in the tournament. Moreover, Bumrah played a crucial role in India's title triumph in T20 World Cup 2024, where he emerged the Player of the Series. Team India will want Bumrah, who is currently grappling from back spasms, to achieve full fitness ahead of Champions Trophy 2025 which is set to start from February 19.