Rohit, Suryakumar Given Ultimatum; Shubman Gill’s Future at Risk

The English Test against India is already shaping up to be a bumpy one as the visitors are way off the mark as they were thrashed by 5 wickets in the first of the five-match series at Headingley. It was India first critical red-ball adventure since Virat Kohli had resigned to Test cricket earlier this year and barring his character in the pressure-filled circumstances was missed.

Having another player who played Test cricket a long time retire in Rohit Sharma, the Test team now must go through a transition period, one that will help them determine how strong and how mature a young group can be under the relative recent leadership of a new captain.

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The bigger picture of the cross-format environment, though, is much more consistent. India won the T20 World Cup under Rohit Sharma in 2024 and launched it with the Champions Trophy in March this year which stringently followed the agony of falling out of the semi-final in the 2023 ODI World Cup. India might have lost their chance to win a title on home turf in 2023, but with role definition and performance stability, they seem to have regained their footing in white-ball cricketing, with forthright performance.

It is against this background that a former England cricketer Allan Lamb made a biting observation of where India is going now. Addressing PTI, Lamb termed India as a force in the one-day international bringing out that the two-pillar pegs coined by the Indian team are Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah, but the red-ball setup may not perform well without the pair.

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“In one-day cricket, India should win every competition. In Test matches, you’re going to rely a lot on Bumrah, and you’re going to miss Virat Kohli big time,” Lamb said, a cry that can be echoed since the defeat against Headingley.

Bumrah is the most bankable match-winner of India in Test cricket, which was proved in the latest five-wicket haul in Leeds Test. However, when the availability of the pacer is controlled. He is not playing five matches in the on-going series; he only plays three and the pressure on him is overwhelming.

The loss of Kohli has, in the meantime, created a huge vacuum in the composure and the leadership of the middle-order which cannot just be filled in with a one-day banana. Gill indeed got a brilliant debut since he replaced Kohlia in the No.4 position of Indian Test team and hit a century in the first test.

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