India head coach Rahul Dravid is “not aware” of the BCCI selectors mulling over or deciding to go with the split captaincy in the Indian cricket team in the near future.
The speculations and rumors regarding the selectors dropping Rohit Sharma from the T20Is and finalizing on Hardik Pandya as the new T20I skipper have kept rising with every series missed by Sharma.
Since the T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia in November concluded, where India reached the semis and lost it to England under Rohit Sharma’s captaincy, Sharma hasn’t played a single T20I series – missing the ones against New Zealand in New Zealand, and against Sri Lanka and New Zealand at home – Hardik Pandya captained in all of them. With the ODIs and Tests preferred this year, Sharma is also unlikely to feature in T20I series going forward
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Hardik Pandya is not the official T20I captain yet
There had been numerous reports suggesting the selectors had made up their mind that Pandya is their new T20I captain – though not official yet.
On the eve of the first T20I against New Zealand in Ranchi, Rahul Dravid was queried on the same topic. The head coach firmly attested that he’s not aware of any such split captaincy plans, and guided this question to the selectors. Dravid doesn’t believe anything close to this – giving Pandya the T20I captaincy – is planned for the near future.
“I am not aware of India adopting split captaincy. I am not the right man to comment on it. You should ask the selectors about it. But no, I do not think so of any such move in near future,” Dravid said at a press conference.
Rohit Sharma, who is still the official all-format India captain, has stated that he hasn’t given up on T20Is yet.
“It was made clear in the past that it’s a 50-over World Cup year, and for some of the guys, it’s not possible to play all formats,” Rohit said earlier at the start of this year. “If you look at the schedule, the matches are back to back. So looking at some of the players’ workloads, we wanted to give them a break. And I also fall into that category.
“We have only six T20Is, three [against Sri Lanka] are over and we have three against New Zealand. So we will look after those boys till we get to the IPL, and see what happens after that. But certainly, I have not decided to give up the format.”
