MUMBAI: For about half an hour after lunch on Day Three of the first Test between India and the West Indies at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, Skipper Shubman Gill went missing, and Devdutt Padikkal acted as his substitute fielder. Vice-captain and player-of-the-match Ravindra Jadeja marshalled the troops in Gill’s absence.If we connect the dots now to what happened an hour after the game concluded on Saturday, one can guess why Gill went inside the dressing room. He was part of the virtual selection meeting for the tour of Australia, where he was elevated as captain of the ODI team, replacing Rohit Sharma.Gill is just 26. He is already the Test captain and the T20I vice-captain to Suryakumar Yadav. He has 16 top brands riding on him and is BCCI’s poster boy. With a new team sponsor, the BCCI is keen to push someone as the face to sell the sport. So what if the tyre company that sponsors the team and the tyre company that pays Gill to place their sticker on his willow are rival brands? However, it could come with pitfalls in the form of injuries and burnouts. Take a look at the turnaround times between series. India finish their Test engagements vs West Indies in New Delhi on Oct 14, provided the game lasts the distance.The tour to Australia commences Oct 19 in Perth, for which the team has to leave on the 15th. The tour of Australia concludes with the fifth T20I in Brisbane on Nov 8. The first Test vs South Africa commences in Kolkata on Nov 14, and that tour, comprising two Tests, three ODIs, and five T20Is, ends on Dec 19 in Ahmedabad.Gill is expected to play all the fixtures. Between Oct 10 and Dec 19, he is scheduled to fly 19,066.8 air miles, captain and open in ODIs, captain and bat at No. 4 in Tests, and open in T20Is with Abhishek Sharma. He must prove that the call to open with him and demote Sanju Samson is the right one and be a good deputy to SKY.It’s a lot on the young man’s plate. This correspondent asked chief selector Ajit Agarkar whether such a packed schedule risks burnout for such a key performer like Gill. Agarkar, though, was defiant. “Hopefully not. I mean, he’s still quite young. I mean, we saw what he did in England under immense pressure. So, there were really positive signs there. You’ve seen his record in One-day cricket as a batter. We hope there’s no burnout.”Gill’s one-day record is an outstanding one. In 55 ODIs, he has 2,775 runs at an average of 59.04 and a strike rate of 99.56. He has eight centuries and 15 half-centuries. He is on track to becoming an ODI great like the guy who he replaced as captain and the guy who he idolises, Virat Kohli.In a sport where ego and ambitions are involved, when someone is perceived as a blueeyed boy of the establishment and is trusted with so much power, Gill will have to handhold players and play good cop, bad cop with the younger members and negotiate the path he wants to tread while handling Kohli and Rohit.The Test format captaincy was an easier ride as Kohli and Rohit retired, and the team had a Gill-Gambhir stamp. The white-ball set-up under Rohit was carefully built since 2021, and the man who built it will be in the team but not with the C next to his name. How Gill handles that will be interesting.Speaking on his YouTube channel, former India batter Mohammad Kaif questioned the move to appoint Gill and remove Rohit as ODI skipper and alleged that the selectors pressurised him to accept the role. “He’s getting all of it in a hur ry. It could also lead to a loss. When you get so much in such a short time, it could backfire,” Kaif said. Kaif also expressed fears of Gill getting overburdened. “My point is that don’t overburden him. He captains in Tests, bats at No. 4. He was made the vice-captain in the Asia Cup — will take over when Suryakumar Yadav steps aside. Now you’ve made him the ODI captain. I feel everything is being done in a hurry. A player never asks for captaincy. Everyone knows that he didn’t want it. You can’t demand it, but everyone seems to like him a lot and considers him a captain for the future. The selectors, including Ajit Agarkar, have pressurised him.”
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