Former England captain Nasser Hussain analysed India’s loss in the Leeds Test match, agreeing with Ravi Shastri’s on-air observations about Shubman Gill’s captaincy and India’s need for a seam-bowling all-rounder. Hussain highlighted how Gill’s leadership style differed from his predecessors Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, while also pointing out concerns about the team’s slip catching and lower-order batting collapses during the match that resulted in England’s five-wicket victory.The Leeds Test marked Gill’s debut as captain following Rohit’s retirement, with England successfully chasing down 371 runs, their second-highest chase at home against India.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!Hussain observed that Gill’s captaincy appeared to be in its early stages, lacking the commanding presence of his predecessors.
“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 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. 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 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.”Hussain expressed surprise that neither Gill nor other senior players addressed Ravindra Jadeja’s bowling strategy on Day 5, where the spinner failed to utilise the rough patches on the pitch effectively.“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 (catches dropped and batting collapse).”Hussain also addressed India’s ongoing search for a seam-bowling all-rounder, comparing the situation to the team’s past players.
“The slip cordon and the catching were poor, something that India have done well in the last two or three years and the collapses. And that concerns me because India has a lower order with spin bowling all-rounders and has had for the last decade, which are magnificent. Ashwin, Jadeja, Axar Patel. In England, they are still looking, I think, for that seam bowling all-rounder, you know, someone like a Hardik Pandya, going back to Ravi’s times, Kapil Dev or whatever, they are still looking for that lower-order bowler who can bat. And if they keep going for, what, seven for 41 and six for 30 or whatever, then this could be a quick series. They need to run down the order.”The team’s experiments with Nitish Reddy in Australia and Shardul Thakur in Leeds have not yet provided the desired balance in the lower order, as evidenced by the collapses in both innings despite the team scoring five centuries during the match.
