Former India wicketkeeper and national selector Saba Karim has urged the current selector’s panel to groom a player who plays all three formats of the game, for the role of captaincy. Karim, who served as a member of the selector's committee, feels that grooming players for this particular role will help the team's cause in the future. He believes, Rohit Sharma is the only viable option at this point of time as neither KL Rahul nor Rishabh Pant have been groomed by the selector’s panel.
Karim's words
"They need to groom someone who plays all three formats. Right now, Rohit is the only option because no one like a KL Rahul or Rishabh Pant has been groomed,” Karim said when he spoke to the Khelneeti podcast.
Karim, further raised concerns on the fitness of Rohit Sharma, who is expected to lead the Indian team in all three formats of the game. According to him, Rohit's injury worries have proved to be the Achilles heel for the team, as he remains to be an uncertain option. He also suggested that the board should consider all these factors before taking the final decision.
"Leaving alone leading, even playing all three formats is a huge task for him. He has been injured multiple times and even now he is returning from rehab. The physio, trainers and everyone involved with his fitness needs to be consulted before making such a big decision. We cannot have a captain who gets injured at the start of a Test series," the former selector opined.
Other options
As of now, Rohit will be an obvious choice for the selectors while other players like Pant and Rahul remain in the contention for the vacant Test captaincy role.
The issue of captaincy in the Indian team has been a hot topic of debate in recent times, since Virat Kohli relinquished his T20I captaincy after the T20 World Cup. Later, Kohli was also stripped off the captaincy in ODI format as the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) wanted only one particular captain for the limited overs format.
The captaincy saga reached its pinnacle when Kohli, all of sudden relinquished his Test captaincy just a day after India's 1-2 Test series loss against South Africa.
