- By Himanshu Badola
- Sat, 30 Aug 2025 10:04 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
Shubman Gill has had a promising start to his captaincy stint as he had a memorable outing in England as the team's Test skipper. Under his leadership, India played out a 2-2 draw in the five-match Test series.
Gill led from the front with the bat and was the top run-getter with 754 runs to his name in the series at an average of 75.40 on the back of four centuries. Amid the ongoing heavy speculations, Gill is expected to take over the ODI captaincy from Rohit Sharma in the near future.
Expressing a different opinion, the former India player Suresh Raina has put weight behind the name of Hardik Pandya for the ODI captaincy. The former India batter Raina believes that Pandya is more suited to captain India in the format, as he sees a resemblance to MS Dhoni in his captaincy style.
"Shubman Gill any day, the way they decide, but I think Hardik Pandya will do a lot of miracles in white-ball cricket as a captain," Raina said on Shubhankar Mishra’s YouTube channel. Even Shubman Gill can be that guy. Hopefully, he [Hardik] should become captain again. He has experience like Kapil Paji, whether it’s batting, bowling or fielding. And he’s a very, very positive guy. The way he has performed, he is a captain for the players. I see him as a glimpse of MS Dhoni in him, the way he interacts and conducts on the ground, the energy, I like the most," he added.
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Having himself played most of his cricket under Dhoni's captaincy, Raina’s preference for Pandya over Gill must not have come without solid reasoning. The veteran also talked about Pandya’s all-round skills and drew parallels with another World Cup-winning captain of India, Kapil Dev.
Notably, Pandya emerged as a captaincy option when he led the Gujarat Titans to the IPL title win in 2022 and an appearance in the final in 2023. He then moved to his former team Mumbai Indians, but had a disappointing spell in the first season as the team finished at the bottom of the league table. However, the five-time champions under Hardik came back strong in the IPL 2025. MI finished fourth in the table and made it to the playoffs.
He captained India's T20I team as well in the absence of Rohit Sharma and had an outstanding record before he was replaced by Suryakumar Yadav for the role.