When the BCCI selectors announced the squads for the first round of the Duleep Trophy 2024-25 on Wednesday (August 14), it became the talk of the town because of the inclusion of several international players.
The likes of KL Rahul, Shubman Gill, Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant, Ruturaj Gaikwad among others headlined the four star-studded squads.
The First-Class tournament would be played from September 5 with India A, B, C and D squads battling for the trophy over a period of 17 days.
While Gill, Iyer and Gaikwad have been named captains of Team A, D and C respectively, Abhimanyu Easwaran has been handed the captaincy of Team B, which also includes Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Siraj and Pant.
The decision to pick Easwaran as skipper over Rishabh Pant has raised eyebrows. Before his horrific car accident in December 2022, Pant was among the strong contenders for India captaincy. In fact, he led the country in a few T20Is when the senior players were resting.
Former India cricketer-turned-commentator Aakash Chopra was also taken aback by the move to ignore Pant for captaincy in a domestic competition.
"Rishabh Pant is not a captain. He has been selected in Abhimanyu Easwaran's team. He is playing under Abhimanyu Easwaran's captaincy, which is absolutely okay. However, is Rishabh Pant not even a candidate for Test captaincy? I am a little surprised," Chopra said in a video posted on his YouTube channel.
"I am not aligned with this personally because the best avatar of Rishabh Pant you have seen is as a Test cricketer. He is the only wicketkeeper in the history of Indian cricket who has scored centuries in South Africa, England and Australia in Test matches."
One of the reasons could be that the board does not want to load Rishabh Pant with the additional duties of captaincy as he is looking to make a comeback into India's Test set-up.
"Who else has done that? No one has. The way he plays in Test cricket and scores runs consistently, personally, in my opinion, he was a captaincy candidate. However, Shubman Gill, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shreyas Iyer and even Abhimanyu Easwaran are captains but Pant is not a captain, and that is a huge takeaway in my opinion," Chopra stated.
"A new era has started. So I will be very curious to know what Gautam's opinion is with regards to Rishabh Pant the captain. When the ODIs started (against Sri Lanka), he didn't play the first two matches, KL Rahul was playing, but Pant came in the last match,” he further remarked.
