New Zealand’s batters Rachin Ravindra, left, and Tom Latham encourage each other while batting against the West Indies on day 3 during their cricket test match in Christchurch, New Zealand, on December 4, 2025
| Photo Credit: AP

England’s Mark Wood. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

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

The covered pitch due to heavy rain on the fourth day of the Test match between Afghanistan and New Zealand at Greater Noida Stadium
| Photo Credit: R.V. Moorthy

The fourth day of the one-off Test between Afghanistan and New Zealand was abandoned due to rain here on Thursday.

The toss was scheduled to take place at 9a.m. but persistent rain continued to play spoilsport as the match officials called off the day’s play for the fourth day in succession.

“The fourth day of the only Test match between Afghanistan and New Zealand teams is also not going to be played due to continued rainfall,” the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) said in a statement.

“The decision about the start of the game tomorrow morning at 8:00 will be made after the stadium assessment,” the ACB added.

Not a single ball has been bowled across four days with the wet outfield preventing any action on the opening two days, raising serious questions over the preparedness of the venue to host the match.

Only seven matches in the history of Test cricket have been abandoned without a ball being bowled.

The last time it happened was in the match between New Zealand and India at Dunedin in 1998.

Afghanistan are the hosts of the game and had picked the venue due to logistical reasons.

It is their 10th match since receiving Test status from ICC in 2017.

Afghanistan are playing against New Zealand in the Test format for the first time. However, this match is not a part of the ICC’s World Test Championship (WTC) cycle.

New Zealand next fly out to Sri Lanka for a two-Test series before returning to India for three Tests, starting October 16 at Bengaluru.

A still from ‘The Test’

Around halfway of the second episode of the latest season of The Test, drama erupts.

English batter Jonny Bairstow ducks a bouncer, the ball goes to the keeper and the batter walks out of the crease. Pretty much a normal thing that happens during a Test match, you’d think. But there’s tense music in the background, almost like you know something is going to happen.

And then it does. Bairstow walks out of the crease thinking the over was done, and wicketkeeper Carey has thrown at the stumps and is claiming a dismissal.

“Sort of within one ball yeah, it happened,” Alex Carey recalls in the docuseries.

The crowd at Lord’s Cricket Ground would go on to chant, “Same old Aussies, always cheating,” even as a disappointed Bairstow exits.

It’s the equivalent of an action-packed interval block in the movies, the kind that leaves you on a high as you make your way through to the bathroom, probably grinning all the way at how good it is.

The current season of The Test, a sports docuseries that follows the Australian men’s cricket team, throws up such excellent moments. Following the Bairstow runout, Alex Carey is made villain in the eyes of the English public, something that affects him mentally, which his teammate Steve Smith reveals in the documentary.

The Test almost resembles a movie made on war, because of the format’s nature to be over five days. Every day, every session has some sort of an event that makes it special, and that, at times, seeps into the next day as well, as a new battle ensues. Like the one revolving around the Aussie bowling and the English openers in Old Trafford that highlights what essentially Bazball is. For the uninitiated, Bazball refers to aggressive, ultra-positive way of playing Test cricket. It makes this format far more exciting that you’d think.

Flashbacks are seldom interesting in films, but in such sports documentaries, it provides context and adds to the drama. Like that of Travis Head, who doesn’t touch a bat for weeks due to his wedding and shows up big time at the World Test Championship against India. Or Nathan Lyon, off tour due to a calf injury – the events of him walking out to bat under such circumstances were dramatic – and watching the rest of the series with his wife in his drawing room back in Australia, while his teammates slog it out in England.

Directed by Sheldon Wynne and Adrian Brown, The Test also cleverly brings in the highs and lows of the game; case in point being how the Aussies, after being in the game in the last Ashes Test at the Oval, veered off course. Such sports documentaries can be made or broken by editing, and the fantastic editing team ensures that The Test is a good watch. It also has some neat quotes (Marnus Labuchange says, “Cricket is a game of small margins. You can feel like you’re on top and it can flip in a second”).

While Season 3 might not have the appeal of the first season of The Test, which focused on the image rebuilding exercise of the team after the ball-tampering scandal, it does have quite a few highs. One wishes that a video crew was sent to the Australian ODI World Cup campaign too, so that cricket fans got a peek into the journey of Pat Cummins’ winning team, which silenced Indian crowds in the final.

Nevertheless, this season of The Test makes for an engaging, thrilling watch, with a few lessons that could appeal to even non-cricket lovers.

The Test Season 3 is currently streaming on Prime Video

Kuldeep Yadav celebrates a wicket during the third Test match between India and England at Rajkot
| Photo Credit: VIJAY SONEJI

He might look like an accountant accidentally woken up by an alarm beeping too early, hair dishevelled and on the point of complaining. But the smile is never far from Kuldeep Yadav’s eyes, suggesting he enjoys a laugh against himself. “I have become mature,” he told the media at the end of the series against England where he took 19 wickets and brought left-arm wrist spin to the forefront of cricket conversations.

The craft appeals to the romantics. The wrist spinner is capable of looking like a genius one day and a novice the next, adding to the glorious uncertainties.

Since making his debut seven years ago, Kuldeep has played just 12 Tests while missing 56 that India played in that period. You need a sense of humour to survive such vicissitudes. And to retain both fitness and passion while spending so much time on the sidelines. He went back to the drawing board, worked on his run up and his pace as well as his batting and has become the bowler he wanted to be.

May soon be spearhead

India’s discovery of new stars (Dhruv Jurel, Sarfaraz Khan, Akash Deep) and ratification of the potential of a recent one (Yashasvi Jaiswal) have been touted as the gains of the series, which they are. But equally important has been the confirmation of the quality and class of their third spinner who might soon be the spearhead of the spin attack.

Kuldeep, 29, made his mark over a decade ago and now, as he says, he has begun to understand his bowling. It is a difficult art, one of the toughest in the game. Most left-arm spinners, from Wilfred Rhodes to Bishan Bedi experimented with wrist spin early on, and then decided that orthodox finger spin, where the ball spins away from the bat is the better option. Garry Sobers bowled in both styles, but there is no record of how many of his 235 Test wickets were earned by wrist spin.

Wrist spinners tend to be, by the nature of their craft, expensive and inconsistent. It takes a captain who understands this to handle Kuldeep, and Rohit Sharma showed he understood both the bowler and the bowling well. He didn’t hesitate from berating Kuldeep when he fell short nor did he ignore the arm-around-the-shoulder treatment that paid such dividends.

When Kuldeep started his career, the ball bowled that went the other way was referred to as the ‘chinaman’, a term now thankfully erased from the game. This was ostensibly because a West Indies player of Chinese origin, Ellis Achong was believed to have been the first to use it. An English batter stumped off such a delivery walked away cursing. It may be an apocryphal story, though. In any case, he was insulting the bowler rather than christening a new delivery.

Two Yorkshiremen, Roy Kilner and Maurice Leyland might have bowled that delivery a decade earlier, the name suggestive of either eastern magic or the conviction that it could only dismiss a batter who hadn’t played cricket. Kilner was a man of charm who contracted typhoid while coaching in India and died at 37. Over a lakh turned up for his funeral in his hometown. Leyland was better known as a feisty batter who averaged over 50 against Australia. Leyland claimed he was the one to name the delivery because it was ‘foreign’ and couldn’t be called anything else.

Kuldeep may not be aware of the anecdotal history behind the delivery he bowls so well . He may not know that he figures in a novel by John Le Carre who wrote the following in his Agent Running in the Field: “I discuss with the parents of our future daughter-in-law such issues as Britain’s post-Brexit trade relations and the tortuous bowling action of India’s spin bowler Kuldeep Yadav…”

Not that it matters. He is capable of bowling the near-unplayable ball, and that should suffice. The ball that got a set Zak Crawley began its journey as if intending to spin across the face of the bat but then seemed to change its mind and crash into the stumps. This was one of the best of the series.

“It wasn’t always easy,” Kuldeep tweeted a couple of years ago, “but it has been worth it.” Cricket lovers agree.