Dubai: Ravi Shastri, who completed his highly eventful tenure as India’s head coach, feels that Rohit Sharma is “ready and capable” to take over the T20 captaincy from Virat Kohli and sharing the leadership burden isn’t such a bad idea in a post COVID-19 world.
Rohit, who will be taking over T20 captaincy from the New Zealand series, is also being tipped to lead India in the 2023 ODI World Cup and the formal announcement in that regard may happen sooner than later.
“I think in Rohit, you have got a very capable guy. He has won so many IPLs, he is the vice-captain of the team, he is ready in the wings to take that job,” Shastri said during India’s post T20 World Cup campaign media conference, making it clear that at this point, no other candidate is being looked as a potential leader.
He, in fact, welcomed the idea of Rohit leading in shorter formats and Kohli captaining in Tests.
“I think multiple captains is not such a bad thing because of the bubble and so much cricket being played, the players need to be rotated around and given the space they need to spend some time with their families and see their parents.
“When a guy doesn’t go home for six months he might have his family with him but you have parents and other family and if you dont get a chance to see them, it’s not easy at all, so I think it’s not such a bad thing,” he opined.
Shastri is convinced that despite their indifferent performance in this edition of T20 World Cup, India will continue to be a very strong T20 team in near future.
“…and as far as T20 team goes, we will always have a strong team. We might not have won this T20 World Cup but going forward, we will have a very strong team, because IPL throws a lot of young players into the mix and Rahul (Dravid) will have his own ideas on how to take this team forward. I see this still to be a very good team.”
