'He was not ready' - Mohammad Kaif's blunt take on Shubman Gill's leadership roles

Former Indian cricketer Mohammad Kaif feels Shubman Gill was unnecessarily put under pressure with the leadership positions thrown at him by the BCCI. Gill was recently removed from the vice-captaincy of the T20I side.

Kaif felt Gill was ill-equipped to deal with the burden of all-format captaincy or leadership roles. The cricketer-turned-commentator felt the top-order batter is now under pressure to prove himself after an underwhelming 2025 in T20I cricket.

"Gill is not in the T20 team. It is not his fault. He is a good player. But there was a lot of load put on him. He was not ready to bear all this. He has a certain capacity. There was a lot of weight on him. That is the reason he has been dropped now. He was just running from one place to another. This is equal to reducing his career. He is under pressure now, and it is affecting his batting in ODIs as well. He scored a fifty, but there was not the same fluency," shared Kaif in a video on his YouTube channel.

Kaif was quick to point out the difference in approach under Rohit's tenure as ODI skipper. He mentioned that the BCCI should not have moved on from Rohit to Gill as India's ODI captain. 

"Under Rohit, many times we would be 2-0 up and he would then try new players in the last game even if we lost, just to see them. We never lost the series at least. He never took bilaterals so seriously. He made a solid team in ICC events. It would have been smart to support him. Moving on from him was the wrong move. They wanted the credit of making the new team, making Gill captain. Behind all that, this New Zealand defeated us at home and went. Something that even a big captain like Williamson could not do, Bracewell did it," he added.

Gill is currently India's Test and ODI captain. He recently led the Men in Blue against New Zealand in a three-match ODI series, which they lost by a 1-2 margin. India will now play a five-match T20I series against the Kiwis before serving as defending champions for the upcoming T20 World Cup.