Indian opening batsman Shubman Gill had impressed one and all with his fantastic batting performances at the top of the order in the recent Test series against Australia in their backyard. With those performances, he had cemented his place in the playing XI ahead of Prithvi Shaw and Mayank Agarwal.

But, according to former India selector Gagan Khoda, Gill is not an an opener and should bat in the middle-order as he is more like VVS Laxman.

“It was not meant to be like this. Shubman Gill isn’t an opener. He is like VVS Laxman, he should bat in the middle-order. India should have picked Mayank Agarwal, who had only two bad Test matches. Even Prithvi Shaw was shown the door after just one failure in Australia,” Khoda told SportsKeeda.

The statement from the former India cricketer comes after India lost the World Test Championship (WTC) final by 8 wickets versus New Zealand on Wednesday. Gill scored 36 runs (28 and 8) in the historic match.

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The former India cricketer then weighed in on the selected playing XI that a lot of people felt lacked a fast-bowling all-rounder.

“India could have taken an extra batsman or a fast bowler who can bat. Someone like Shardul Thakur could have done the trick,” Khoda said.

Even the Indian skipper Virat Kohli talked about lack of a fast-bowling all-rounder in the team while replying to a query made by one of the commentators in the post-match presentation and also made it clear that the management went with this combination considering their success in different conditions.

“You need to have a fast-bowling all-rounder for that. We've been successful with this combination in different conditions. We thought this was our best combination, and we had batting depth as well, and if there was more game time, the spinners would have come into the game more as well,” Kohli had said.