The Board of Control for Cricket in India made two big announcements along with the announcement of the Test team for the South Africa tour on Wednesday. Rohit Sharma will now be the captain of the first ODI, while the Test vice-captaincy was also snatched from Ajinkya Rahane and given to Hitman. Its direct message is that Virat Kohli’s stature in the team has reduced, while Rohit Sharma will now be seen in a bigger role in all three formats. He will captain T20 and ODI and vice-captain of Test.
Both these decisions clearly mean that after the many promotions that Rohit has got, now the pressure has increased on Virat to do better as captain and batsman in the Test format. Team India has been invincible for a long time in the home Test series. Now the pressure will be on Virat to register a victory under his leadership outside the Indian sub-continent. Also, Virat should play the role for which he is known with the bat.
Test captaincy also in danger?
The Indian team had won the last Australia Test series, but then Ajinkya Rahane was leading the team instead of Virat. Virat had returned home after the initial Test, in which India lost, for personal reasons. If Virat, who has played a total of 97 Tests, does not do well, then it is possible that Rohit may be handed over the command of the Test format as well.
Legacy ended in the last line
It is noteworthy that the last line of this formal announcement by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was the most important. After all the information related to the Test team, the last line written was, ‘The All India Senior Selection Committee has also decided to nominate Rohit Sharma as the captain of the ODI and T20 International teams.’ With the announcement of this decision, Virat Kohli’s white-ball captaincy era ended. He will now be seen captaining Team India in the red ball format i.e. Test itself.
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Rohit’s record is tremendous
India has played 10 ODIs under Rohit’s captaincy, while 8 have won. Lost in two. It can be gauged from this that how much better the record of Team India is under his captaincy. During this, Rohit has scored 543 runs at an average of 77.57. He has two centuries to his name including a double century. His best score is 208 not out, which he scored against Sri Lanka in the match played on 13 December 2017 in Mohali.
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Test squad for South Africa series
Virat Kohli (Captain), Rohit Sharma (Vice-Captain), KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Shreyas Iyer, Hanuma Vihari, Rishabh Pant (WK), Wriddhiman Saha (WK), Ravichandran Ashwin, Jayant Yadav, Ishant Sharma, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Shardul Thakur, Mohammad Siraj.
Standby: Navdeep Saini, Saurabh Kumar, Deepak Chahar, Arjan Nagwaswala.
Test Schedule: First Test 26-30 December (Centurion), Second Test 3-7 January (Johannesburg), Third Test 11-15 January (Capetown)
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