Not Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul; Sunil Gavaskar Suggests Rishabh Pant as India’s Next Test Captain After Virat Kohli Resigns

India's Next Test Captain: While Rohit Sharma who is the vice-captain, should be the obvious choice, ex-India opener Sunil Gavaskar thinks otherwise.

Mumbai: Virat Kohli brought India to a halt on a Saturday with the announcemnt of stepping down as India’s Test captain. Now, speculations are wild over who would take over from Kohli. While Rohit Sharma who is the vice-captain, should be the obvious choice, ex-India opener Sunil Gavaskar thinks otherwise.

The legendary opener backed young Rishabh Pant to take over the reins from Kohli. Gavaskar reckons giving Pant the responsibility would change him as a cricketer.

“I would look at Rishabh Pant as the next India captain. And for one reason only, just like Rohit Sharma was given the captaincy of Mumbai Indians, look at the change in his batting after that,” he said while speaking on India Today.

“Suddenly the responsibility of being the captain meant that instead of playing those beautiful cameos, he was scoring 100, 150, 200. And that sense of responsibility, if given to Rishabh Pant, will make him score many of those wonderful hundreds that he scored,” he added.

As per reports, Kohli first spoke to India head coach Rahul Dravid about his decision to quit Test captaincy, following which he called up BCCI secretary Jay Shah to inform him about his decision. Kohli spoke at length with Dravid and informed him about his decision to quit Test captaincy without letting his team members know about the decision.

Virat Kohli will go down as the most successful Test captain ever for India, having won 40 out of 68 Test matches that he captained, leaving behind MS Dhoni, who won 27 out of 60 matches and Sourav Ganguly, who won 21 out of 49 matches that he captained.