It’s a very exciting time for Indian cricket. The possibility of a third straight World Test Championship final beckons, along with the chance of completing a hat-trick of Test series wins in Australia, the supply line of talented players across formats seems to be very healthy, India are the reigning T20 World champions and occupy the top spot in the ICC ODI and T20 team rankings, along with the second spot in the Test listings, the IPL is going from strength to strength, and an Indian is the ICC Chairman again.
For those of you who like to look ahead though, there’s no doubt that the question ‘Who should be India’s next Test captain after Rohit Sharma?’ has crossed your mind. Sometimes, in life, the obvious choice is not the best one. In this case though, the obvious choice is just so appealing that it’s difficult to look beyond it. In the absence of the captain, the vice-captain (usually) steps up to lead the team. As and when Rohit retires from Test cricket, the powers that be should look at following the same, simple formula to pick the next long-term Indian Test captain. Look no further than vice-captain Jasprit Bumrah.
Split Captaincy A Constant Now?
Before delving into why Bumrah is the ideal Test captaincy option, let’s also address a question that you might be asking right now: is split captaincy going to be a constant in Indian cricket going forward? Well, as things stand, it very much does look like that. It will be interesting to see who the Indian Board thinks is best suited for ODI captaincy once Rohit retires from that format or altogether from international cricket. Will the duties for ODI stewardship also be handed to Suryakumar Yadav, whose overall fitness and availability is what made the selectors pick him as (what looks like) India’s long-term T20I captain ahead of Hardik Pandya? But these are questions for later. As far as the Test format is concerned, it would be silly to look at anyone else but Bumrah.
In all my experience of covering Indian and global sports, the one golden rule that emerged (and one that cuts across all lines of work) is that a sure-shot way of being a good leader is to lead by example. Set the bar high. Anyone worth his or her salt will tell you the same. Respect cannot be bought, it has to be earned. When it comes to leading a cricket team, a captain has to be many things: a good man/woman manager, a good communicator, a shrewd strategist, a good listener, a quick thinker capable of drawing up on-the-spot plans if things aren’t going right, supportive, encouraging, lively, polite, not over-the-top and yet not a pushover. Along with all this, a captain should be someone who stands out in terms of his/her own performance on the field. And that is what works most in Bumrah’s favour. That is what we saw in the Perth Test recently.
A Reflection Of Another Great
A casual look at the scorecard from that match, which India won by a dominating margin of 295 runs, shows Jasprit Bumrah listed as the Man of the Match for his match figures of 8/72. Though that is not enough to properly encapsulate the impact he had on the match. Test cricket is the longest format of the game and unlike T20 or even ODI cricket, you don’t find too many matches that tilt in the favour of one team decisively, in large part because of the efforts of one player. That is the kind of impact Bumrah had in Perth. But then, he is that kind of rarity–someone who can take the pitch and the conditions entirely out of the equation to deliver body blow after body blow till the opposition is reeling and ready to be knocked out. A lot like the great Kapil Dev, whom Bumrah has been compared to quite a bit of late. The comparisons, however, are fruitless, because the eras, the rules, the fast bowling supporting cast, their bowling actions, are all different.
What cannot be debated though is that Bumrah could well become one of the all-time greats, just like Kapil Dev. However, this is not a dissection of how great a bowler Bumrah is, but an attempt to look at the facts at our disposal that suggest that he is a very, very good long-term Test captaincy option.
A Way With The Ball
Some of you might have forgotten that Bumrah had worn the captain’s armband in Tests once before as well. In the 2022 Birmingham Test vs England, Bumrah led the team as Rohit was recovering from COVID-19. India lost that match by seven wickets, but Bumrah was the leading Indian wicket-taker, with five scalps. In England’s second innings, which was dominated by centuries by Joe Root (142*) and Jonny Bairstow (114*), Bumrah was the only one amongst the wickets, castling Zak Crawley for 46 and having Ollie Pope caught behind for a duck.
Apart from his heroics with the ball—albeit in a losing cause—what stood out were Bumrah’s comments when asked about captaincy before the match: “Getting such an opportunity is probably one of the biggest achievements of my career… nothing changes for me, you have to do the job.” The comments were a healthy mix of honesty, humility, practicality and job awareness. In other words, quintessentially Bumrah.
Making Others Comfortable
And that, along with his almost superhuman abilities to make a cricket ball dance to his tunes, is his other big strength. He is mostly a down-to-earth person, largely humble, respected and admired by seniors and juniors alike, ready to whisper that extra word of encouragement in a fellow bowler’s ear, and also ready to listen, collate and learn. Any player who thinks he or she knows it all is doomed to fail. It applies all the more to leaders. They must always be ready to learn, not just from those with more experience, but sometimes even from those who fall in the ‘junior’ bracket. Here I am reminded of a few scenes from the Indian dressing room in the Perth Test this time, when Yashasvi Jaiswal and KL Rahul were wearing down the Aussie bowlers in India’s second innings. When the director asked for the feed to cut to one of the cameras focussed on the Indian dressing room, we witnessed just how cordially and patiently Bumrah was listening to and then conversing with debutante Harshit Rana. The body language of a debutante in the dressing room tells a million stories about how comfortable he or she is feeling. Virat Kohli is a similar leading figure—always ready to advise and guide—he has remained the same even after his captaincy spell. It wasn’t really a surprise then to hear Rana say that ‘Jassi bhai’ and ‘Virat bhai’ were the two players who gave him ‘a different kind of confidence’ in his very first Test match.
If Bumrah does go on to become India’s full-time Test captain, he will in many ways be a trendsetter. The only other fast-bowling captain India has had in Test cricket has been Kapil Dev, who belongs to that rare breed of complete all-rounders. The likes of Shaun Pollock, Ben Stokes and to an extent Imran Khan (six Test centuries), Wasim Akram (three Test centuries) and Jason Holder (three Test centuries) have also been genuine all-rounder captains. Bumrah is an out-and-out fast bowler.
Why Bowlers Make Good Captains
Throughout the history of the sport, there has been some mental block towards appointing bowlers as captains. Batters have always been the preferred choice. This has presumably been because a batter’s overall workload allows them to spend more time to strategise. However, it’s a bowler who lives through the changing nature of the pitch, who knows best what bowling strategy to adopt when and from which end. It makes a lot of tactical sense to have a bowler as a captain. Also, when a fast bowler is made captain, the decision comes with the unsaid and unwritten rider that he or she needs to be careful about how much they are bowling themselves vis-à-vis the other bowlers. Neither too much nor too little is acceptable. The same was a big talking point when Pat Cummins was appointed as Australia’s Test and ODI captain.
It’s a strange thing to worry about, really. Who would want to bowl themselves if they are not fresh? Who would realistically not throw the ball to another bowler who can possibly get a breakthrough? Isn’t winning the match for the team of paramount importance, always? Bumrah was quizzed about the same before the Perth Test and his response to that was emphatic—“I can manage myself the best when I am the captain”.
Why Selectors Trust Him
Managing injuries is another challenge altogether, and Bumrah has dealt with his fair share of that in the recent past. Lower back stress fractures kept him on the sidelines for 11 months. But, as soon as he was cleared to play, he was appointed captain of the B-team that toured Ireland for three T20Is. India won the series 2-0 (the third T20I was washed out). Bumrah was adjudged player of the series for his four wickets at an average of 9.75. There’s a visible trust that the selectors place in his leadership abilities.
For now, he is the vice-captain of the Test team and the pace spearhead, and his complete focus will be on helping his team complete a third straight Test series win Down Under. But when the time comes, let’s hope the powers that be don’t look beyond Jasprit Bumrah as India’s next Test captain.
(The author is a former sports editor and primetime sports news anchor. He is currently a columnist, features writer and stage actor)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
