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From Rohit-Kohli To Jaiswal-Gill: India’s Test Transition Gets Off To A Fairytale Start

Jatin

Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal [Source: @ICC, @BCCI/x.com]Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal [Source: @ICC, @BCCI/x.com]

There are days in Test cricket that feel like a turning page. Then there are days that feel like the start of a brand-new book.

June 20, 2025 was the latter.

No Rohit Sharma. No Virat Kohli. No familiar war cries. Just a fresh breeze sweeping across the outfield at Headingley. 

And in its wake, two young men: Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill, who stood tall, not as torchbearers but as torch-carriers, lighting up a new chapter in Indian cricket with the kind of authority that doesn’t whisper change...it shouts it from the rooftops.

For the first time in over a decade, the Indian Test team walked out without its two modern-day giants and yet, the sun rose just fine in Leeds. In fact, it blazed a little brighter because what followed on Day 1 of the England Test was not a stumble into transition, it was a full-blown statement.

Yashasvi Jaiswal: Cut From Hitman’s Cloth, Stitched In Fire

When Yashasvi Jaiswal bats, there is a rhythm, an almost musical tempo to his strokes. But on this day, there was something more. There was a mood. A message. 

With every punch down the ground, every flick off the pads and every whip past square leg, he seemed to echo the grace and control of a young Rohit Sharma, not a copy, but a kindred spirit produced from the same silken steel.

His 101 on Day 1 of the first ENG vs IND Test was not just a hundred on foreign soil, it was a salute to his spiritual predecessor.

Rohit made opening in Tests an art form; Jaiswal has now taken that canvas and splashed on his own colours. His fifth Test ton, his first in England, arrived with the swagger of someone who knew he belonged.

The cover drives were caresses, the pulls were punches and by the time he walked off, the English bowlers looked less like opponents and more like witnesses.

Shubman Gill: The Crown Prince Who Chose His Moment

Then there is Shubman Gill: India’s youngest full-time Test captain, stepping into two pairs of oversized boots: Rohit’s leadership and Kohli’s No. 4 spot. 

It was a setup loaded with pressure, expectation and legacy. Gill, however, walked in as if auditioning for neither. He simply owned the part.

His unbeaten 127 was a proclamation. The boy from Punjab, all style and steel, married control with clarity in a way that only the greats manage. And the echoes were impossible to ignore.

Kohli’s captaincy debut? A century in Adelaide, 2014. Gill’s captaincy debut? A century in Leeds, 2025. Eleven years apart, yet stitched together by fate, flamboyance and the fire of ambition.

Even the date played ball. June 20, 2011, is when Kohli made his Test debut. June 20, 2025, is when Gill made England chase leather on Day 1 of a new era. 

Cricket doesn’t just deal in numbers, it deals in poetry and this was a stanza worth framing.

The Changing Of The Guard, Without Missing a Beat

For years, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli were India’s guiding stars: the calm and the chaos, the grace and the grind. But every constellation eventually shifts. And as the two stalwarts exited stage left, the next act had already begun, not in shadows, but in limelight.

Jaiswal and Gill didn’t look like apprentices. They looked like inheritors ready, willing, and gloriously able. The comparisons will come, the weight of legacy will linger but Day 1 at Headingley proved one thing beyond doubt: the succession isn’t a work in progress, it’s a revolution in motion.

A Duo Born From Legacy

This was not the beginning of the end. This was the end of the beginning.

Rohit and Kohli gave India an era of dominance, drama and sheer delight. And now, Jaiswal and Gill have laid the first bricks of a new fortress.

One century each, under the English sun with the weight of history on their backs and the freedom of youth in their strokeplay.

The Hitman and the King have written their final lines in red-ball cricket.

Now, the Hustler and the Crown Prince pick up the pen. And what a first chapter they have written.