Jasprit Bumrah will be seen as the Indian Test captain for the first time in the Test match against England in Birmingham. The BCCI has today confirmed that regular captain Rohit Sharma has not yet recovered from COVID and will miss the match, thus Bumrah has been announced as the captain.
Jasprit Bumrah has not captained any team before but the pacer has said that he will try to contribute to the best of his ability as a team. Not having experience in terms of captaincy, Bumrah mentioned that MS Dhoni also became captain without any experience and went on to end his career as a successful captain.
For the past several days, there was discussion about who could be the Indian captain for the match starting from July 1st. The main reason for this is that the regular captain Rohit Sharma has contracted the COVID-19 during the warm-up game against Leicestershire.
The team management waited for Rohit to recover till Thursday but even after that, Rohit was COVID positive. It was only after this that the Indian selection committee announced the name of Jasprit Bumrah as the captain.
Bumrah will be India’s 36th Test captain. It will also be after a gap of 35 years that a pacer is the Indian team captain, last being the legendary Kapil Dev.
Before the match tomorrow, Bumrah addressed the media on Thursday. In the pre-match press conference, Bumrah talked about the challenges he may face as India captain. He also revealed about his discussion with MS Dhoni.
He said that he has spoken to MS Dhoni, who told him that he became captain directly without any prior experience.
“I remember speaking to MS (Dhoni), and he told me that he never captained any side before he led India for the first time. Now, he is remembered as one of the most successful captains of all time,” said Bumrah.
He further added that everyone wants a responsibility and one plays cricket for the same. He said that when one is under pressure, success feels much better. He said that he wants to test himself to the deepest, citing an example of deep water.
