‘Better if it doesn’t happen in our culture’ – Irfan Pathan after India adopt split captaincy for South Africa tour

Irfan Pathan (Photo Source: Irfan Pathan/Instagram)

The Indian team is all set for their upcoming multi-format series against South Africa, including three-game T20Is, three ODIs and two Test matches. It is also worth noting that the team will have three different captains across formats as the ODI team will be led by KL Rahul, the T20I side by Suryakumar Yadav, and Rohit Sharma will be the skipper for the Test series.

Speaking of the same, former Indian cricketer Irfan Pathan came forward to show disapproval of the idea of different captains for different formats and opined that it gives an idea of how the future could be.

“This could be a sign for the future, which I am not a big fan of. There has been talk for a long time about whether we can do split captaincy. It’s true workload management has been done here, and that is why you are seeing such big squads and different captains,” Pathan said during a discussion on the Star Sports show Game Plan.

Furthermore, Pathan stated that the same trend could be seen quite a lot in the future and even talked of the possibility of different coaches in different formats in the future as well. Pathan also talked of how the Indian team works with one consistent coach and skipper and even gave the example of top international sides where different coaches and skipper are the norm.

“It’s clear that Rohit Sharma had to take a break from white-ball cricket, so you are not seeing him there. You are seeing him as the captain of Test cricket. However, you might see these things going forward. You might even see different coaches for different formats. I believe it’s better if it doesn’t happen in our culture,” Pathan said.

“If we see white-ball and red-ball cricket, we only have two or three players who are different, where you can consider players like Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane. However, if you see other than that, we generally have all-format players. If we talk about our youngsters, you will see Shreyas Iyer and Shubman Gill playing everywhere. So most of our players are like that, who play all formats. That’s why if you have 70 to 80% players who play all formats, it’s better if the coach and captain are also the same,” he added.