Legendary former Indian opener names new captain for India in T20Is

When appointed as the captain of the Indian cricket team, Rohit Sharma was given the responsibility to help India win the 20-20 World Cup in 2022 and then the ODI World Cup in 2023. However, the 35-year-old has failed to keep up with the task, as the Men in Blue faced an embarrassing defeat at the hands of England in the semi-finals to bow out of the tournament in Australia.

Following which, the name Hardik Pandya is risen up as the favourite to replace Rohit as the captain of the Indian team. Considering Rohit Sharma’s age, there’s a belief in the Indian cricket fraternity that the five-times Indian T20 League winner might not continue to play T20Is at the international level and thus, Hardik, who recently won the trophy with the Gujarat-based franchise should step up and build a new culture with new talents in the team.

Former World Champion and chief selector of the Indian Cricket Team Krisnamachari Srikkant completely agrees with the idea and wants Hardik to take over and initiate a rebuilding process to help ream India reach their potential in the shortest format of the game.

“See if I was the Chairman of the selection committee, I would say that Hardik Pandya should be the captain of the 2024 World Cup, straight away, I'd put it that way - number one. And start rebuilding a side right from today, that is from the New Zealand series which is going to happen in a week's time. You start from today, the preparation for the World cup, you need to understand, starts 2 years in advance,” said the former cricketer while talking to Star Sports.

You need two leaders going forward: Irfan Pathan

Former India all-rounder Irfan Pathan however raised a very different point which caused trouble to India in the recent past. Rohit Sharma, the designated captain of the Indian Cricket Team, missed a lot of crucial matches because of various injuries and by the looks of it, Pandya too is an injury-prone cricketer. Thus, 2007 20-20 World Champion wants India to keep at least two leaders ready in order to prepare for the next 20-20 World Championship.

“I'm not saying that if you change the captain you change the result, if you go like that you're not going to change the result. And with Hardik Pandya, you need to understand, we all need to understand, that he's a fast bowling all-rounder. He has injury issues as well,” said Pathan in the same show.

“So, what I personally think is that Hardik Pandya is a leader, who has done very well in Gujarat, won Indian T20 League, won the championship trophy. You need to find not one, but two leaders going forward to build their mark. You know just like we talk about openers - we need to have a group of openers, we also need to have a group of leaders,” he added.