 "Pacer Jasprit Bumrah had finished as the leading wicket-taker in India's tour of Australia with 32 wickets besides leading the visitors to a dominant 295-run victory in Perth. AP")
Jasprit Bumrah was widely tipped to succeed Rohit Sharma as India Test captain following the team’s disastrous results in the five-day format, from suffering a 0-3 whitewash at home against New Zealand to surrendering the Border-Gavaskar Trophy to Australia with a 3-1 defeat Down Under. Having led India to a dominant 295-run victory in Rohit’s absence in the first Test against Australia in Perth, Bumrah was expected to take over on a full-time basis starting with the marquee five-Test series against England after the ongoing Indian Premier League .
The BCCI, however, will not be offering Bumrah a leadership role in the upcoming tour of England in which the Test series gets underway at Headingley on 20 June, according to a report on The Indian Express. The decision has been taken keeping Bumrah’s fitness and workload management in mind.
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Bumrah had suffered a back injury during the fifth Test against Australia in Sydney which led to a three-month absence, during which he missed the limited-overs assignments against England at home and India’s victorious Champions Trophy campaign as well as Mumbai Indians’ first four matches of the ongoing IPL season.
With Bumrah not being considered for the vice-captain’s role, the BCCI and the Indian team management is likely to opt for a younger member of the team as Rohit’s deputy keeping the future in mind.
Impact Shorts
More Shorts“We want a player who will be available for all five Test matches and he should be given the vice-captain’s role. Bumrah won’t be playing all five matches, so we don’t want to appoint different deputies for different games. It will be better that the captain and vice-captain should be certain and play all five Tests,” a BCCI source was quoted as saying in the report.
As per the report, top-order batter Shubman Gill and Rishabh Pant are likely to be considered for the vice-captain’s role in England with the former seen as a front-runner. Punjab batter Gill currently leads Gujarat Titans in the IPL and is also the vice-captain in the limited-overs formats, serving as Suryakumar Yadav’s deputy in T20Is.
India A likely to depart for England on 25 May
The five-Test series will be preceded by three tour games in which the India A cricket team will face England Lions. And while the Ajit Agarkar-led selection committee is yet to announce the squad for the warm-up series before the main event gets underway, a report on The Times of India states that the team will likely leave for England on 25 May – the day Kolkata’s Eden Gardens hosts the final of the ongoing IPL season and five days before the four-day game against the Lions in Canterbury.
The initial group of players will include those players who are either not part of the action in the ongoing IPL, or whose franchises will not be part of the action in the playoffs. The report adds that the board has already identified and reached out to several players who are likely to be part of the India A squad, with the logistics team finalising their travel plans besides getting their kits ready.
Also Read | Rohit, Kohli could play India A games in England ahead of five-Test series
The main squad that will be hoping to end India’s 18-year wait for a Test series win on English soil is expected to leave in different batches, depending on their participation in the current IPL season, with some expected to feature in the second unofficial Test before the intra-squad game.