Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting has added that newly appointed India Test captain Shubman Gill has a lot of work to do as far as his Test batting is concerned. He also said that having to improve his batting and captain India in Test cricket would not be an easy task for him as well.

Ponting also revealed that he wanted Shubman Gill to lead India in the fifth Border-Gavaskar Test match against Australia at Sydney in January 2025, when Rohit Sharma didn’t play the match as well.
“His white ball form has been incredibly good. He’s got a little bit of work to do, on his Test match batting. And that’s never easy when you’re a new captain, to have to worry about your batting to the degree that he’s going to have to, it won’t be easy for him,” Ricky Ponting told PTI.
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“I actually named him as captain for the Sydney Test match last summer when Rohit didn’t play that game and there was a bit of an injury cloud over Bumrah, or as that game went on, Bumrah actually broke down in that game,” he further added.

However, Virat Kohli’s retirement from the longer format in May means that the team need to find a new number four batter in Test cricket. Ricky Ponting also felt that Shubman Gill should bat at that number for India in the first Test against England at Leeds on Friday, June 20 as well.
“The reason I did that was if they go with (Yashasvi) Jaiswal, and if Sai Sudarshan is the other opener, they need someone a bit more experienced at number three. So that could be either, KL at three, or that could be a Karun Nair at three and Shubman at four. Once you grow into it, then you can move yourself back up to that number three spot,” Ricky Ponting concluded.