Shubman Gill didn’t quite have that on-field aura of Kohli, Rohit: Nasser Hussain

Shubman Gill didn’t have the kind of start to his Test captaincy as he would have envisaged as India lost to England by five wickets in the first Test of the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy on Tuesday, June 24, at Headingley, Leeds.

Former England skipper Nasser Hussain felt that Shubman was trying to find his way as a captain and didn’t have the kind of on-field aura that his predecessors like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma possessed.

“I thought I saw someone just finding his way, honestly. You’ve got to be very careful in the first Test match, the people he’s (Gill) taken over from, Kohli, and then Rohit Sharma. I thought he didn’t quite have that on-field aura as the names I mentioned there. You look down on those two previous names, and you immediately see who was in charge of India,” Hussain said on Sky Sports.

Hussain felt that there were senior players like Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul chipping in with advice on the field, trying to help the new captain. The cricketer-turned-commentator felt that Shubman followed the ball and his style of captaincy was reactive and not proactive.

“I looked down from the press box, the commentary position, there were a lot of captains; it was a bit captaincy by committee, which can happen in your early days as a leader because you’re still senior players like Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul want to try and help you out as much as possible. I thought he followed the ball a lot. I thought he was reactive as opposed to proactive,” he said.

Hussain also pointed out how Shubman and other seasoned campaigners of the Indian team could have had a discussion with senior all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja on exploiting the rough on the surface, which was something that his fellow commentators Ravi Shastri and Mark Butcher suggested when on air.

“A word with Jadeja, maybe as a young captain, to go to such an experienced spinner, and go, you do know the rough is out there. Ravi Shastri and Mark Butcher are up there, going, show us where that ball is pitching, and it was pitching nowhere near the rough. Ravi was saying, a bit slow, a bit wide, bowl in the rough. I was surprised that not one of the senior players or captains went to Jadeja and said, ‘Can we go a little bit wider?’ But Ravi’s right, they lost the game for two things that he couldn’t control,” Hussain said.