The selection on Saturday for the Australian tour has almost confirmed the next poster boy in Indian cricket. It is "almost" because the faith in Gill has been shown by the selectors and now it is his turn to repay that with results like he did in the Anderson-Tendulkar trophy, where he was in contention to break Sir Donald Bradman's (974 runs; Shubman Gill scored 754 runs which is 5th highest) record for most runs in a bilateral test series. He also captained India to a 2-2 result with a young side on English shores. The Asia Cup 2025, though, as a vice-captain, has been a bit of a hit and miss in terms of runs. The attention now turns to ODIs, in which he has a fabulous record (2775 runs @ 59.05 from 55 games) and has been announced as captain for the upcoming three-match ODI rubber for the series Down Under. However, the catch here was that Indian selectors had to remove an established captain who had taken the side ICC World Cup 2023 final and won the Champions Trophy 2025 victory this year in Rohit Sharma. But Ajit Agarkar, addressing the press conference, reasoned why they took that decision. Impossible to have 3 captains "Firstly, it's practically impossible to have three different captains for three formats (Suryakumar Yadav is the T20I captain). Just in terms of planning. Obviously, at some stage, you've got to start looking at where the next World Cup is. It's also a format that is played the least now. So you don't get that many games to actually give the next guy, or if there is going to be another guy, that much time to prepare himself or plan. And we're two years away still. It might look like a long time, but we don't quite know how many one-day games we might play. Closer to the World Cup, we might end up playing a little bit more than what we have. But the last one-day game we played was in March in the Champions Trophy. And the next one we play is on October 19," Agrakar said. "So it is a bit of a challenge with one-day cricket at the moment. Of course, the focus has been on the T20 World Cup. But surely we'll start planning for that World Cup to come. As a plan, it gives the next guy enough time to plan with whatever games that we have coming. And it is very difficult to have three different captains for three formats. In terms of not just selectors, but more importantly, even for the coach, to plan with three different people is never easy," he added. Can Shubman handle pressure? "He's (Gill) still quite young. We saw what he did in England under immense pressure. So there were really positive signs there. You've seen his record in one-day cricket as a batter. We hope there's no burnout. It is true there's a lot of cricket coming thick and fast over the next few months in particular. He, particularly, but the team management as well," Agarkar reasoned. How much role did success in England influenced decision "He's (Gill) been vice-captain in one-day cricket for a while now. It's not just the England (Test series in June-July) series. That's always the plan. Whenever the next guy takes over, ideally he should be the vice-captain. Doesn't always work out that way. But obviously, what he's shown in England was really good positive signs, and we're very hopeful. Because if you're going to make that call, you want to try and make it reasonably early and give the other guy enough chance to try and get that confidence of leading another format," said Agarkar.
