India will be captained by Jasprit Bumrah in the Test match against England beginning 1 July in Edgbaston, the BCCI confirmed on the eve of the game.
Regular captain Rohit Sharma has been ruled out due to COVID-19.
“Rohit Sharma, Captain, Indian Cricket Team is ruled out of the rescheduled fifth Test against England to be played from Friday. Rohit underwent a RAT Test on Thursday morning and returned a positive result for COVID-19,” BCCI said in a statement.
Bumrah’s deputy will be wicket-keeper Rishabh Pant. Bumrah becomes India’s sixth captain in the 2022 calendar year for the men’s team. Bumrah had been the vice-captain during India's previous Test series, against Sri Lanka at home.
He incidentally has never led in any form of cricket, so this will be his maiden captaincy stint. He will also become the first fast bowler to captain India since Kapil Dev, who was removed in 1987 after the Pakistan match in Bangalore. Bumrah will be the 36th cricketer to lead India in the longest-format since the country first played in 1932.
India currently lead the series 2-1 and were captained by Virat Kohli when it had started off in 2021.
With Bumrah becoming the Test captain of India for Edgbaston Test, 2022 is set to be the year where the national side had six different captains across all formats, the highest for any calendar year. He also becomes the eighth man to lead India since 2021. Previously, India had played under five captains in 1959; they were Vinoo Mankad, Hemu Adhikari, Datta Gaekwad, Pankaj Roy and Gulabrai Ramchand.
India currently lead the five-match series for the Pataudi Trophy 2-1, having registered famous victories at Lord's (by 151 runs) and The Oval (157 runs) last year apart from a draw in Trent Bridge and a loss by an innings and 76 runs at Headingley. A win at Edgbaston will seal the series in their favour, which will be just the fourth time the visitors won a Test series in England after 1971, 1986 and 2007.
India’s Test squad: Jasprit Bumrah (Captain), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Hanuma Vihari, Cheteshwar Pujara, Rishabh Pant (vice-captain) (wk), KS Bharat (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Shardul Thakur, Mohd Shami, Mohd Siraj, Umesh Yadav, Prasidh Krishna, Mayank Agarwal
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