India fell to England by five wickets in the first Test of the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy on Tuesday, June 24, at Headingley, Leeds, and Shubman Gill didn’t have the kind of start to his Test captaincy that he had hoped for.
Nasser Hussain, the former captain of England, thought Shubman was still figuring things out as a leader and lacked the charisma that his predecessors, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, had on the pitch.
“To be honest, I assumed I spotted someone who was just getting lost. You’ve got to be very careful in the first Test match, the individuals he’s (Gill) taken over from, Kohli, and then Rohit Sharma. He didn’t, in my opinion, have the same aura on the field as the players I listed there. Hussain stated on Sky Sports, “You look down on those two previous names and you immediately see who was in charge of India.”
Hussain believed that there were older players like Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul chiming in with suggestions on the field, trying to support the rookie captain.
The cricketer-turned-commentator felt that Shubman Gill followed the ball and his style of captaincy was reactive and not proactive.
“I thought he followed the ball a lot, and I thought he was reactive as opposed to proactive,” he said. “I looked down from the press box, the commentary position, and there were a lot of captains; it was a bit captaincy by committee, which can happen in your early days as a leader because you’re still senior players like Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul want to try and help you as much as possible.”
Hussain also pointed out how Shubman and other seasoned campaigners of the Indian team might have had a chat with senior all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja on exploiting the rough on the surface, which was something that his fellow commentators Ravi Shastri and Mark Butcher mentioned whilst on air.
“A word with Jadeja, maybe as a young captain, to go to such an experienced spinner, and go, you do know the rough is out there. The ball wasn’t pitching close to the rough, but Ravi Shastri and Mark Butcher were up there showing us where it was. Ravi was saying, a touch sluggish, a bit wide, bowl in the rough. It surprised me that none of the captains or senior players approached Jadeja and asked if they could go a bit wider. “But Ravi is correct, they lost the game because of two factors beyond his control,” Hussain remarked.
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