India vs England: Shubman Gill doesn’t have any experience of leading the Test team before, whereas the team that has been picked has two players in its ranks – Jasprit Bumrah and KL Rahul – who has led the team before.
Shubman Gill is officially the new Indian cricket team’s Test captain. At a media conference in Mumbai on Saturday, BCCI chief selector Ajit Agarkar made the announcement while making public India’s team for the five-Test series against England, which begins on June 20.
Shubman Gill lacks experience of captaining the Test team, whereas the team that has been picked has two players – Jasprit Bumrah and KL Rahul – who have captained the team in the past.
BCCI chief selector Ajit Agarkar was blunt in his thinking when questioned on the pair and their prospects of leader. Bumrah as he has captained us in Australia but one, and he is not at all available for all the Test matches. I think we would have preferred him more as a player. It’s always an added burden when you are handling 15-16 people. It exhausts you a lot. We would prefer to have him as a bowler.
Hope he has a big series. He is a key player of ours, so to have him fit as a bowler is important. He is aware of where his body is at the moment,” Agarkar added. “With KL not exactly, essentially he did lead some time ago but I was not present at that moment.
We wish that he had a significant series. But, as far as Bumrah is concerned, keeping him fit as a bowler is very important.” Agarkar added that a captain is not chosen for one or two series and long-term thinking must be kept in mind while making such decisions.
“You don’t choose a captain for one or two series, you need to think about the longer term. We hope that he [Shubman Gill] will learn with time,” Ajit Agarkar explained in a press conference.
Gill became one of the youngest captains at the age of 25. Although he has no experience of captaincy in the red-ball game, he has been captain of India in a five-match T20I assignment in Zimbabwe in 2024. Gill has also been the captain of the Gujarat Titans of the Indian Premier League.
Gill has also been vice-captain in ODIs and T20Is. He was deputy to Rohit Sharma during India’s winning Champions Trophy campaign in the UAE in Feb 2025. In Test cricket, Gill has played 32 games and has scored 1,893 runs with five centuries.
India’s Test team for England series: Shubman Gill (c), Rishabh Pant (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Karun Nair, Nitish Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jurel, Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Arshdeep Singh, Kuldeep Yadav.
