India Tour of Sri Lanka: Rohit Sharma likely to return to lead the national side for the ODIs

New Delhi: India’s tour of Sri Lanka has been cooking for the last few days like a hot pancake generating waves of rumours and speculations. In this epic saga of ups and downs a new story cooks up as news comes in from BCCI that Rohit Sharma is most likely to return to the national side and lead the men in blue for the upcoming tour of Sri Lanka. Sharma who is returning after a long break recently won the t20 World Cup with his side in Barbados and bade his farewell to the shortest format of cricket.

Earlier, it was speculated that the Indian side would be travelling to Sri Lanka without the services of Rohit, Kohli and Bumrah. Subsequently, the captaincy duties for the upcoming tour were likely to be given to KL Rahul for the upcoming tour. But the latest report clearly shows that Kohli and Bumrah will have an extended leave before the series while Sharma is set to be back for the tour.

One possible explanation for this is India will be playing just 6 ODIs before the Champions Trophy 2025. As such the BCCI officials might look to give Sharma more game time with the team as the captain.

The “Hardik-Surya” conundrum for Gautam Gambhir and Co.

Although the ODI captaincy saga seems to conclude, BCCI is occupied with a more pressing issue at the moment i.e. the “Hardik-Surya” conundrum for the T20I captaincy. Before the start of the Sri Lanka Tour, Hardik was touted to be the next T20I captain. However, in an extraordinary turn of events, head coach Gautam Gambhir has entrusted Suryakumar Yadav with the captaincy role.

Subsequently, news came in that Hardik would not be able to travel with the national side altogether. The actual reason so far has been given as “personal reasons” for this surprising departure. However, things look grim at the moment between all the concerned parties. So, with Rohit’s departure is something cooking in the dark once again?