Gautam Gambhir, Aakash Chopra and Parthiv Patel opine on who should lead India in T20Is

As India’s limited-overs vice-captain Rohit Sharma took his franchise Mumbai Indians (MI) to their fifth title in the just-concluded 13th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL 2020), a debate stirred in the cricket fraternity whether Sharma should be named the captain of the Indian cricket team instead of Virat Kohli.

Many cricket pundits and former players are coming up with their views on the working of split-captaincy in India. While detailing their opinions on the same topic, former Indian opening batsmen Gautam Gambhir and Aakash Chopra got into a heated argument.

While Gautam backed Rohit saying that he is more competent for leading India in the shortest format of the game, Aakash is of the view that IPL can’t decide the fate of the captaincy of the Indian team. Speaking on the Star Sports Show, Cricket Connected, Gambhir reckoned that though Virat is not a poor captain, Rohit is much better for the leadership role.

Chopra countered saying that this isn’t the right time to switch captaincy as the T20 World Cup is next year and India will hardly get to play just 5-6 games before that. He feels that there is no time to build a new team or to apply new work ethics or philosophy.

Aakash Chopra and Gautam Gambhir indulges in a heated debate for Indian team captaincy

It is generally said that the captaincy of the National team can’t be decided to look at the performance in franchise cricket. However, Gautam Gambhir doesn’t agree with this as he believes that if the board can pick the players for the National team by looking at their stats in IPL, the same can be applied for captaincy too.

“When we pick the players for international cricket looking at their IPL form, then why can’t we pick the captaincy of the Indian team from IPL too. If we can’t pick captaincy, then IPL should not be a parameter for batting or bowling performances. The selection of T Natarajan, Washington Sundar, Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav in the Indian team is also wrong as they were picked from IPL only.”

However, Aakash Chopra doesn’t hold the same view as he feels that Virat Kohli hasn’t done anything wrong to be sacked as the captain of the Indian team. Chopra also reckoned that there is nothing wrong if a player who performs in international circuit, can’t replicate the same in IPL.

“IPL is there. But the performance of international pedigree will be considered as the performance of international pedigree only and IPL will be seen in isolation. There is no problem if certain players who have done well for India, don’t perform in IPL. Virat Kohli as an Indian captain has done absolutely right in T20 cricket.

Parthiv Patel, who was the third guest on the show other than Gambhir and Chopra, agreed with the views of the former as he believes that Rohit is a better captain than Kohli.

Parthiv said, “Who takes a better decision, who reads the game better, who makes a better decision in a pressure situation to make the team win – in these things Rohit Sharma as a captain is slightly better than Virat Kohli.”