Indian national cricket team’s legendary all-rounder Kapil Dev has backed captain Rohit Sharma to come out of the slump and win matches for the team again with his stellar performances.

Kapil Dev also sent a reminder to Rohit Sharma’s critics, saying that the India captain won the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024 just a few months ago.

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Rohit Sharma’s poor form a big concern

Rohit has lost four consecutive matches as Indian Test skipper. Under his leadership, the team faced an absolutely humiliating 0-3 whitewash against New Zealand at home, which was the lowest point in the history of Indian cricket.

Rohit then missed the subsequent match against Australia, which was played in Perth, and Jasprit Bumrah led India to an epic 295-run victory.

However, when Rohit returned to captain the team, India faced an embarrassing 10-wicket defeat against the Australians in Adelaide as the 2024-25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy was leveled at 1-1.

Captaincy is not the only concern for Rohit Sharma as his personal form with the bat has been terrible. In the last 6 Test matches, he failed miserably and his performances had a direct impact on India.

In the Test series against Bangladesh, he recorded scores of 6, 5, 23 and 8 and then followed it up with scores of 2, 52, 0, 8, 18 and 11 in the New Zealand series. Also, in the Adelaide Test, he scored 3 and 6 runs in two innings.

You don’t have to prove yourself – Kapil Dev

Meanwhile, World Cup winning captain Kapil Dev criticized Rohit Sharma and said that the latter does not have to prove himself as he has already done so over the years.

Kapil added that he would never doubt the credentials of Rohit Sharma, the captain, as he has had great success and backed him to bounce back strongly.

“He doesn’t have to prove himself. He has done this for many, many years, so let’s not doubt anyone. I won’t doubt him. I hope he regains his form, that’s important,” Kapil said during the launch of the Vishwa Samudra Open , a PGTI event starting at the Delhi Golf Club on Tuesday.

“With one or two performances, if you doubt someone’s captaincy, I mean, just six months ago, when he won the T20 World Cup, you wouldn’t have asked me this question. Let him go, knowing his skill and talent, he will. They will return. They will return with force,” he added.

I think it’s too early to talk about it – Kapil Dev on Jasprit Bumrah as captain

Kapil Dev also rejected the idea that Jasprit Bumrah is fully ready to take over the captaincy from Rohit Sharma. He said such a decision cannot be taken after a few failures of Rohit. Kapil Dev stated:

“I think it’s too early to talk about that. With one performance you can’t say he’s the best, and with a bad performance you can’t say he doesn’t deserve it.

“Let a player play a lot of cricket, take on a lot of captaincy. Ups and downs will come, and then you judge a person by how he reacts in tough times, not in good times. In good times, I don’t have to judge. When he’s down and out …”