The recently concluded Indian Premier League reignited the captaincy question in Indian cricket as Rohit Sharma guided Mumbai Indians to a fifth IPL title while Virat Kohli’s Royal Challengers Bangalore struggled.
The debate on split captaincy has gathered momentum with several former players suggesting that the opener be handed the leadership of at least the T20 side while Kohli continues in Tests and ODI cricket. In the IPL, Rohit has proved to be the most successful captain while Kohli is yet to win the trophy. The Mumbai batsman, who is the vice-captain of the Indian team in white-ball cricket
While former India cricketer Gautam Gambhir has maintained that if it would be a shame if Rohit isn’t handed the captaincy of the Indian cricket team in limited-overs format, he found support in the form of Parthiv Patel, who has played for RCB.
“Virat is not a bad captain, but the discussion here is, who is a better captain and that is Rohit Sharma. And not just better, the difference between them is huge,” Gambhir said in a recent discussion over the issue on Star Sports show Cricket Connected.
Patel said that Rohit is better when it comes to reading the game and making decisions under pressure.
“What we are talking about over here is – Who can take better decisions, who can read the game better, who can take match-winning decisions under pressure and I think Rohit Sharma is slightly better in all these things.”
However, Aakash Chopra took a different view of the matter. “Now is not the time for changes. There is no time for you to build a new team. If you want to apply new work ethics or new philosophy, there have to be games. If you’re going to play 5-6 T20s before the next T20 World Cup, then I wouldn’t like to fix something that’s unbroken,” he said.
Recently, former India skipper Kapil Dev had given his view over the raging debate saying, ‘‘One company cannot have two CEOs’
You can watch the full discussion here