The appointment of Suryakumar Yadav as team captain and Shubman Gill as his deputy created a lot of hullabaloo in the media, especially after the news broke out.
Hardik Pandya was Rohit Sharma’s vice-captain when India won the T20 World Cup and had a great tournament (144 runs at a strike-rate of 151.57 and 11 wickets at an average of 17.36).
It was anticipated that Pandya would be Rohit’s natural successor. On Monday, before going to Sri Lanka from Mumbai, Agarkar said that it was the right decision for him because he believed that Pandya had not been fit enough to make this move. “A captain should be on field more often than not,” commented Agarkar about demotion of Pandya.
“I asked why Surya?” Answered Agarkar.
Agarkar also revealed that there were other reasons including growing respect for Suryakumar in the dressing room. “He has been around the group over the last year, we get feedback from the dressing room quite a lot. He has a good cricket brain. For one thing we wanted our captain who is likely to play all games. We think he is a deserving candidate” said by Agarkar.
However, Agarkar spoke highly of Pandya’s abilities and said they do not want him taking up more responsibilities.
Why did Rahul miss out?
One could say KL Rahul is another player in India who has captained in virtually every format thus making him also worthy of wearing this armband.
“We have got an opportunity to reset things and we’ve got some time to plan it better now. When Hardik got injure Rohit wasn’t playing T20Is so suddenly I had to change my mind set from being vice-captain to being captain. But still since he was around so it make our life easier and he can come and lead. We don’t want to be in a situation moving forward. Where suddenly you have to look around for a captain if there are injuries, or loss of form somewhere. Shubman has shown decent leadership qualities so we wanted to give him exposure.”
Agarkar was ask whether the players would feel hard-done by if Sanju Samson (dropped for ODIs despite getting a hundred in his last outing vs SA in a series-decider), Abhishek Sharma (dropped from T20Is despite getting a hundred in Zimbabwe) and Ruturaj Gaikwad (dropped despite impressing in both ODIs and T20Is) were right by him.
“Every player who is left out feels hard-done by. Our challenge is to pick only 15. Someone is probably going to miss out just so that we can try and get the best balance possible. You’ve got to see who’s picked ahead of them (KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer). Are those guys not deserving of their place?” Agarkar quizzed.
Jadeja stays on for ODI’s
While there was significant angst at the ouster of Samson and Gaikwad from the ODI team. There was also one constant name across formats missing: Ravindra Jadeja. “There’s a big Test season coming up so he’s going to feature in quite many Tests,” confessed Agarkar about this matter.
