​A new cycle: on A new-look Indian cricket squad  

Less than a week after South Africa emerged triumphant in the ICC World Test Championship (WTC), a new cycle has begun. Bangladesh is already in Sri Lanka, busy playing a Test, while a more high-profile series will commence once India takes on England at Headingley in Leeds from Friday. A new-look Indian squad under the stewardship of Shubman Gill will step out for duty while a clean break from the past has been implemented due to the retirements of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and R. Ashwin, and the omission of Ajinkya Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara. A tour of the Old Blighty is never easy and that has been the case since 1932 when India made its Test debut at Lord’s. Series triumphs were etched in 1971, 1986 and 2007, but otherwise it has been a tale of Indian batters floundering against swing under whimsical English skies. Even as India beat Australia in its backyard over the last decade despite the loss in the last encounter, England has remained a tough place to tour. However, cricket’s spiritual home has also gifted some special Indian memories like B.S. Chandrasekhar’s spells, the 1983 World Cup victory, Dilip Vengsarkar’s three consecutive hundreds at Lord’s, and the Test debuts of Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid, to name a few.

A sense of a beginning is evident in cricket’s birthplace and seen in that light, Gill and his men are in the right place. Ravindra Jadeja, K.L. Rahul, Jasprit Bumrah and Karun Nair, busy charting a comeback, constitute the seniors in a unit high on youth with even Gill being just 25. The Punjab star has to deliver on two counts, both as batter and skipper. A 35.05 average after 32 Tests does not reflect the quality innate in him. It is not just that the batting core has changed as even the slip-cordon will have new personnel, and the way Gill guides his outfit through this transition will determine how India will fare in the latest WTC cycle. Bumrah will remain the spearhead but with workload management being the key, he will not play all the five Tests at stake. His old ally Mohammed Shami will be missed but in Mohammed Siraj and others, Bumrah has a set of talented fellow pace bowlers. Squaring against them would be Ben Stokes and his men busy relishing home advantage with Joe Root being the lead anchor among their batters. In a challenging tour stretching all the way to August 4, Gill, in tandem with vice-captain Rishabh Pant, gets an opportunity to forge a fresh and strong Indian unit.