Rohit Sharma or Ravichandran Ashwin should be stop-gap Test captain, says Dilip Vengsarkar
Former Indian cricketer, Dilip Vengsarkar has stated that either Rohit Sharma or Ravichandran Ashwin should be the stop-gap Test captain of the national team. He further added that KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant need another year before getting appointed as the skipper of the Test team.
India lost the third and final Test against South Africa in Cape Town, and suffered a 2-1 defeat to the hosts in the three-match red-ball series. Soon after the series defeat against the Proteas, Virat Kohli announced his decision to quit the Test captaincy role with immediate effect.  Kohli had already relinquished T20I captaincy after the conclusion of the T20 World Cup 2021, and later the 33-year-old was sacked from the ODI skipper role.
Rohit Sharma replaced Kohli as India's white-ball, while the middle-order batsman continued to lead the national side in the longest format of the game. Following the resignation of Kohli from the Test leadership, cricket experts and fans suggested the names of Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul as Team India's skipper in the red-ball format.
Meanwhile, Dilip Vengsarkar opined that either Rohit Sharma or Ravichandran Ashwin should be the stop-gap Test captain of Team India, while the side grooms the future skipper. The former Indian cricketer further added that KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant and Shreyas Iyer are not yet ready for the captaincy role, and they need another one year before getting appointed as the skipper of the Test team.
“I would appoint Rohit or Ashwin as a stop-gap captain and groom the future captain. Right now, you need somebody with captaincy experience and an assured place in the Test side. Rohit and Ashwin have established themselves in Test cricket," Vengsarkar told TOI.
"Pant, Rahul, or Shreyas (Iyer) need another year before they’ll be ready for the job. Pant has proved his mettle, but needs to work on his shot-selection. Till then, either of them can be asked to captain India in the white-ball format, and be the vice-captain in Tests. That ways, they’ll get to observe and learn how to lead the Indian team,” he added.
Dilip Vengsarkar was the chairman of the selection committee in 2007, and the panel appointed Anil Kumble as Test captain for the series against Pakistan, when experts and fans thought MS Dhoni would be appointed as the skipper in the longest format of the game. Vengsarkar stated that Dhoni, who was then the white-ball captain of Team India, got an opportunity to learn a few things by following Kumble closely.
“We wanted to give some more time to Dhoni before he took the Test captaincy. He was already the white-ball captain, and we wanted him to learn a few things by following Kumble closely. Kumble led India superbly in that period,” he recalled.