Men in Blue will look to begin the New Zealand tour on a high after a disappointing end to their 20-20 World Cup as England breezed them out by 10 wickets in the semi-final. The opening encounter between India and New Zealand in Wellington was washed out due to rain. The second T20 International will take place at the Bay Oval on Sunday, November 2022.
The squad will be without the likes of regular skipper Rohit Sharma, along with other players like Virat Kohli and Mohammad Shami. Hardik Pandya will be leading the side once again after the Ireland series. Although the all-rounder has been acknowledged to take over from Rohit, it has not been officially announced yet by the Indian Cricket Board in India. However, former Pakistan opener Salman Butt is confused about this.
Earlier this year, the 29-year-old helped the Gujarat franchise lift the title in their debut season in the Indian T20 League. After this, Hardik has been looked at as the replacement for Rohit in T20Is. And following India’s heartbreaking T20 World Cup campaign in Australia, experts have backed BCCI to consider Hardik as the new skipper.
However, Butt on his YouTube channel said that Hardik is talented and is capable of leading the International side as well, but he thinks that the Indian skipper has not done anything to get sacked. He also feels that the 35-year-old has played some brilliant innings, and this discussion should not come on the basis of results.
‘Only one captain has won the World Cup…’: Salman Butt
“I don’t know who is seeing him as captain and who is watching such dreams. He has talent and has tasted success in the IPL. But even Rohit Sharma has been successful five to six times in the IPL. If he had scored well in a couple of matches (in the T20 World Cup 2022), people wouldn’t have been talking about making this change at the top,” he said.
“In the Asian subcontinent, people start talking about such drastic and big changes rather soon. Not all of them, but quite a few, who probably don’t understand how these things work. Sometimes, just for the sake of giving an opinion, people say, ‘change the captain’,” he added.
Butt further said that India should not hurry in taking decisions on the basis of the loss in the 20-20 World Cup semi-final. “Only one captain has won the World Cup, the rest of the teams have lost. Will you change the captains of all 11 teams because they lost the World Cup?”, he asserted.
