Sunil Gavaskar Endorses New Contender For India Captaincy, Shubman Gill And Rishabh Pant Likely To Be Challenged For Big Role

Gautam Gambhir has a very big challenge on his hands, to lead the Indian team through a tough phase of transition. Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma are already in the very last phases of their respective careers. The star Indian duo have already retired from Test and T20I cricket. They'll only play ODIs now, but for how long? Nobody quite has an answer to this question.

Gambhir has already won an ICC Champions Trophy with the Indian Team earlier this year, but white-ball cricket is not quite the concern of Indian cricket.

Sunil Gavaskar Throws In Shreyas Iyer's Name In The Race For Captaincy

Shreyas Iyer is now an IPL-winning captain. Though the IPL is a T20 league and it can't be compared to Test cricket, winning a championship by outsmarting nine other teams over two months is no small deal. Iyer led the Kolkata Knight Riders to their third IPL trophy in 2024, and this year, in IPL 2025, he has turned the Punjab Kings into an immovable force.

India legend and the winner of the 1983 World Cup, Sunil Gavaskar, feels that Iyer's name too should be in consideration as far as the leadership duty of the Indian Team is concerned. Gill is leading the Gujarat Titans, and Rishabh Pant was appointed as the skipper of the Lucknow Super Giants earlier this year.

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‘When you see Gill, Iyer, and Pant, three main pretenders to Indian captaincy, you see an amalgamation of all three (Dhoni, Rohit, Virat). Gill is probably more competitive; when there is a decision, he asks the umpire right away. He is probably a lot more involved. Though Pant is behind the stumps, he is also very involved. Iyer too has been superb’, said Gavaskar during the Star Sports Press Room.

Test Cricket, The Biggest Challenge For India

India is dominating white-ball cricket and will continue to dominate white-ball cricket across formats for many more years to come now. But the biggest challenge that the stakeholders of Indian cricket will face is the problems of red-ball cricket.

Everybody knows what happened against Australia and New Zealand last year. A home Test series and an away Test series, both of them reduced to ashes. Now, Rohit and Virat have both retired, and India now needs new leaders.

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