Hardik Pandya is captaining India in T20Is on the ongoing New Zealand tour.
After Team India’s failure at the recent ICC T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia, many have been suggesting major changes in the side in order to have fruitful success in the shorter format of the game, as the Men in Blue haven’t won a World Cup title since 2011.
One of those changes is Hardik Pandya being named T20I captain.
While Rohit Sharma’s captaincy came under scrutiny along with his form, Pandya has emerged as the front-runner to replace him as T20I captain, thanks to him leading the Gujarat Titans to IPL 2022 title.
Currently, the star cricketer is India's captain for the T20I series against New Zealand, which is an open indication that he is going to be the next leader of the Indian team in the future.
Well, former Pakistan captain Salman Butt was not really impressed with the idea.
Salman Butt said on his YouTube channel: “I don't know who is seeing him as captain and who is watching such dreams. He has talent and has tasted success in the IPL. But even Rohit Sharma has been successful five to six times in the IPL. If he had scored well in a couple of matches (in the T20 World Cup 2022), people wouldn't have been talking about making this change at the top.”
He also slammed former cricketers for calling for Rohit to be removed as T20I captain solely because he couldn't win the 2022 T20 World Cup.
He added, “In the Asian subcontinent, people start talking about such drastic and big changes rather soon. Not all of them, but quite a few, who probably don't understand how these things work. Sometimes, just for the sake of giving an opinion, people say, 'change the captain'.”
Butt signed off by saying, “Only one captain has won the World Cup, the rest of the teams have lost. Will you change the captains of all 11 teams because they lost the World Cup?”
(With NDTV Inputs)