After a bout with the covid-19 that saw him miss the Edgbaston Test against England, Rohit Sharma was back in the blue colours when India took on Jos Buttler’s white-ball England side in Southampton for the first of three-T20I series on Thursday.
India registered a dominant victory by 50 runs, bowling England out for 148 after posting 198. And with this, Rohit Sharma entered record books as he became the first captain to register 13 consecutive wins in the shortest format.
Rohit Sharma opens up on the captaincy merry-go-round
However, one factor of concern, and really striking, has been the number of captains India have had since Rohit Sharma and Rahul Dravid took over.
Apart from Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, the likes of KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya and Jasprit Bumrah have led India in different formats. (And Dinesh Karthik, too, got to captain India, in a couple of warm-up T20 matches before this series). Also, Shikhar Dhawan will be leading the side in the ODI series in West Indies later this month, making it 7 different players to captain the country in 2022.
Rohit Sharma was queried about this at the toss in Southampton, to which he explained that the jam-packed scheduling – there was only a gap of one day between the Edgbaston Test and the Southampton T20I – plus injuries and rest to the senior players, including himself, has led to this merry-go-round of the captaincy hat.
“No. It’s something we have prepared. We know the scheduling, we got to have the understanding, that players will be swapped every now and then. You can create your bench strength as well, a lot of opportunities for guys to come out and play. Exciting times, these guys have been here for a while playing in Ireland and played a couple of games here as well,” said Rohit at the toss.
The second T20I will be played on Saturday at Edgbaston where India will look to seal the series.
