Australia and South Africa are all set to fight tooth and nail at the World Test Championship (WTC) final starting today. While the two teams have earned the right to play the final Test match of the 2024-25 cycle, there’s a certain flavour that the Indian fans are missing. This is the first time that India will be missing in action from a WTC final and like Australian captain Pat Cummins said: “You always expect them (Indian team) to be around.”
Meanwhile, Indian Test cricket is staring at a rebrand and rebirth in every sense of the word. India’s hopes of making it to the WTC Final were quashed late last year after a below-par series against New Zealand at home followed by a gut-wrenching Border-Gavaskar Trophy, where the skipper had to drop himself owing to poor form. During the final Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground, tensions ran high. Apart from Rohit Sharma dropping himself, a sight that Indian cricket isn’t used to seeing, Jasprit Bumrah being driven to a hospital in the middle of the Test match and India losing the series 3-1 – the fraternity had a whiff that things were about to change.
Ahead of the much anticipated five-match Test series against England, in the middle of the IPL season, Rohit announced his retirement, and seven days later, Virat Kohli did the same. In a trice, India had lost two of the most experienced Test batters. On the other hand, it was clear that Bumrah, who was named the Test captain in the last match of the BGT, was unlikely to play all five test matches—leaving a gaping void in the team’s leadership squadron.
The selectors had made it clear that the criterion for the next captain is to last an entire WTC cycle; they were not looking for temporary solutions or stop-gap options. In that case, there were only so many options for the selection committee to choose from—Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul. And among the three, it was clear that Gill was the frontrunner.
On May 24, the team stepped into one of the biggest transitional phases in the history of Indian Test cricket as the selectors announced Gill as the next captain. A young captain leading a fairly inexperienced side is something we haven’t seen in a long time. The pressure will be on Gill to deliver and to take the team through a fresh WTC cycle. While expectations aren’t sky high, Gill and co have the opportunity to do something phenomenal.
Questions have been raised over Gill’s performance with the bat in SENA countries, but it’s clear that the selectors want him at the helm. England could make or break Gill the captain and, more important, Gill the batter. This is an audacious Indian side, with Pant as the vice-captain, Karun Nair making a comeback to Test cricket, an inexperienced pace attack that could be without Bumrah for a couple of matches and young batters stacked at the top.
And now, as the WTC final unfolds without India, the real challenge for Indian cricket lies ahead, and the story is not about absence but transition. A new era is upon us, where Gill will attempt to steer a fairly youthful team through the treacherous waters of Test cricket. There will be sunny days and times of smooth sailing, but also rough waters, and an opportunity to reshape the identity of Indian Test Cricket. And perhaps, by the time the next WTC final rolls around, this very team, raw, audacious, and quietly hungry, could well be back on the biggest stage, not as contenders who fell short, but as a side reborn.
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