India Squad For Australia Tour: Why Shubman Gill Replaced Rohit Sharma As Captain?

India revealed their squad for the white ball series in Australia and although there were no major surprises in terms of inclusion and exclusion, there was a massive highlight from the team announcement. Shubman Gill is the new ODI captain for India and Rohit Sharma will now be playing only as a batter in the format.

Gill who is already the Test captain thus becomes a two-format skipper while being the vice-captain in T20Is. Explaining the rationale behind the decision to have a new captain, chief selector Ajit Agarkar said that the team is now looking at the 2027 Cricket World Cup.

"Obviously, at some stage you've got to start looking at where the next World Cup is. It's also a format which is played the least now. So, you don't get that many games to actually give the next guy, or if there is going to be another guy, that much time to prepare himself or plan," Agarkar explained after announcing the squad.

Rohit, under whom India won the 2025 Champions Trophy, will be of 40 years when the World Cup 2027 arrives and with teams playing less ODIs, preparing early was crucial for Agarkar.

"And we're two years away still. It might look like a long time, but we don't quite know how many one-day games we might take. Closer to the World Cup, we might end up playing a little bit more than what we have. But the last one-day game we played was, what, 8th or 9th March in Champions Trophy. And the next one we play is on October 2019. So, it is a bit of a challenge with one-day cricket at the moment," said Agarkar.

There were also reports that Shreyas Iyer is the frontrunner to lead in ODIs. However, that would have meant three different captains for India across formats. Agarkar said that would have not been ideal.

"Of course, the focus has been on T20 World Cup. But slowly we'll start planning for that World Cup to come. So, as a plan, it gives the next guy enough time to plan with whatever games that we have coming. And it is very difficult to have three different captains for three formats. In terms of not just selectors, but more importantly, even for the coach, to plan with three different people is never easy," he added.

India's ODI squad

Shubman Gill (Captain), Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer (VC), Axar Patel, KL Rahul (WK), Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar, Kuldeep Yadav, Harshit Rana, Mohammed Siraj, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Dhruv Jurel (WK), Yashasvi Jaiswal