• Home
  • Who Said What
  • Not Our Culture Irfan Pathan Against Split Captaincy In Indian Cricket

'Not Our Culture' - Irfan Pathan Against Split Captaincy In Indian Cricket

image-lpp9l31gHardik Pandya and Rohit Sharma (X.com)

After the conclusion of ICC Mens ODI Cricket World Cup 2023, Indian skipper Rohit Sharma and veteran batter Virat Kohli decided to take a step back from white-ball cricket. The duo is set to miss the white ball series of the upcoming South Africa tour.

Having said that, Rohit Sharma's involvement as the captain of the side for the T20 World Cup 2024 is also under scanner as the skipper is reportedly contemplating retirement from the shorter format. But at the same time, Rohit is committed to red-ball cricket, which led fans to speculate the possibility of split captaincy in the near future.


Irfan Pathan voices resentment against split captaincy

Split captaincy is a predominant trend in the western part of the globe. However, former Indian cricketer Irfan Pathan is against the Western concept and hopes it doesn't get incorporated into Indian cricketing culture. 

However, Pathan does see the change as inevitable. He believes workload management is necessary, and to achieve that, split captaincy could be the need of the hour. 

"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," said Pathan.

Not only that, the former all-rounder expects spit coaching stints along with captaincy. 

"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," he added.

For the forthcoming tour of South Africa, India will have three captains for three different format series. While Rohit Sharma will lead the Test side, KL Rahul and Suryakumar Yadav have been named skippers for the ODI and T20 series, respectively.

In fact, from the time Virat Kohli relinquished captaincy a couple of years ago, the trend of split captaincy crawled into Indian cricket with Rohit Sharma also struggling to grapple with the workload of playing three formats.