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India's captain Shubman Gill watches teammates train before the start of play on day five of the first cricket test match between England and India at Headingley in Leeds, England, Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell)
It was only Shubman Gill’s first game as captain in the red-ball format, and he was put to the sword with Bazballers. Defending 371 runs in the final innings, Gill did scratch his head while Ben Duckett’s innings was going on after the bowling. However, former Indian cricketer Mohammed Kaif opined that Gill captained better than Ben Stokes.
“As a young captain, Gill did brilliantly by giving Bumrah 4-4 overs and rotating him well. He led better than Ben Stokes. Well done, thumbs up,” Kaif said on his YouTube channel.
“Helpless captain because he was playing with one and a half bowlers. One is Bumrah, and the remaining half is Jadeja. There was no support from Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, or Shardul. You can’t win the Test match with 1.5 bowlers. He did captaincy very well and looked good to me. He used his resources well,” he added.
Although leading for the first time and having a poor record in SENA countries, Gill managed to score a ton in the first game as captain in the first innings. “I will praise him a lot because it was a big Test for him in this series. It was important for him to score in England. Everyone said he doesn’t know how to play in England, [you] made him captain, but hasn’t scored runs. But he passed the Test with the bat, scored a century, excellent batting. Apart from captaincy, he showed he can deliver with the bat,” he added.
Didn’t quite have that on-field aura: Nasser Hussain
“I thought I saw someone just finding his way, honestly. You’ve got to be very careful in the first Test match, the people he’s taken over from, Kohli, and then Rohit Sharma. I thought he didn’t quite have that on-field aura as the names I mentioned there. You look down on those two previous names, and you immediately see who was in charge of India,” Nasser Hussain said on Sky Sports.
“I looked down from the press box, the commentary position, there were a lot of captains; it was a bit captaincy by committee, which can happen in your early days as a leader because you’re still senior players like Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul want to try and help you out as much as possible. I thought he followed the ball a lot. I thought he was reactive as opposed to proactive,” he added.
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