We got chatting with Harsha Bhogle on a Sunday morning, soon after South Africa broke their big-tournament-win jinx and won the World Test Championship, beating Australia, at Lord’s. The celebrated cricket commentator and author was his usual candid self. The talk soon veered towards the big India vs England Test match series that starts today in Leeds, which he will be commentating on. With many fans seeing this as a baptism by fire for a young Indian squad with a new Test captain in Shubman Gill, post the double whammy retirement of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, we picked his brains on what this means for Indian cricket.

First things first, your feelings on South Africa winning the World Test Championship…

I thought South Africa showed a lot of character. I’d said long before that South Africa, when the fourth innings started — it might have seemed a contrarian view at the time — that if South Africa believed they would win it... because I’ve seen South Africa pull off these fourth innings chases very often in the past. So very happy for South Africa, very happy for Temba Bavuma (captain). I think he’s a man of character. And men of character must win and be celebrated. Aiden Markram, a man of character, (Kagiso) Rabada, coming out of a difficult phase in his life to compete with (Jasprit) Bumrah as the best bowler of his era. So, it just tells you why Test cricket is so fascinating.

Going into the Test series, let’s start with a SWOT…

I think England is a very, very good side at home. England’s bowling is a little short on experience. They’re missing a lot of players due to injury. They’d ideally like to play (Mark) Wood, (Jofra) Archer, (Chris) Woakes, (Gus) Atkinson, all of those together and only Woakes is available at the moment. At some point, Archer and Atkinson will be.

So it’s up to India to take the early advantage in this series. It’ll be how England bowl versus how India bat. I think India’s bowling is the stronger arm at the moment because the batting is a little inexperienced. But if the batting starts to do well, I mean, if Yashasvi (Jaiswal) gets off to a start, if (KL) Rahul has a big series, if (Shubman) Gill discovers his form, there’s no shortage of ability there. Our best Test match batter is actually Rishabh Pant, by the way, over the last four years at least.

And then you want to see how, if Abhimanyu Easwaran has been around for 10 years and has done nothing wrong and deserves his spot in the side. If they choose to go with Sai Sudharsan. There’s a great story waiting to be told about Karun Nair. If he does well... it’s a great story there to see how a Nitish Reddy, Shardul Thakur play their roles.

There’s so much to look forward to in that series.

Given the amount of pressure on Shubman Gill, what would you tell him if you were the coach of the Indian cricket team?

Don’t even think of the word ‘pressure’, leave it to physicists. Let them measure it in inches or millimetres of mercury. Let them measure it in atmospheric pressure. Just leave it to them. Don’t even think about it. Through our aggressive social media, through our aggressive digital media, we end up putting far more pressure on the players ourselves. We do it, other than the opposition. So let it be because this is a turning point in his life. If he can do well here, then he’s got the next 10 years or so. So there will be many, many challenges ahead of Shubman, but he’s got the ingredients. Now you’ve got to see how the dish pans out. You’ve got all the great ingredients on the table. So, different people will cook the same ingredients differently.

What other boxes do you think he ticks that made the selectors go, yes, let’s try Shubman Gill?

He’s calm. He’s taken a side (Gujarat Titans) that had deficiencies in it to the play-offs in the IPL. It wasn’t the strongest side on paper, but he took that side into the play-offs of the IPL, which is a big thing. Some good sides didn’t make the play-offs.

So I like that about him. He seemed calm, which is a very great quality. It’s an excellent quality of a leader. But remember, he’s done that when 20-25 minutes were going against him. In T20 cricket, the whole game is over in... minutes. So, things will go against you for 30-40 minutes.

Here, things could go against you for four hours, five hours or six hours. So that will be his test when things are going against him: how does he stay calm? How does he still show hope because when the captain is down, it’s very difficult for the rest of the team to pick itself up.

So, I’ll be looking at whether he can carry that and whether he’s able to build a very mutually beneficial association with Gautam Gambhir (coach).

Batons have been passed on, obviously. Sports is like that. You have to cheer in the next generation. You’ve seen many such coronations over the years. But does Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma’s retirements feel too large a vacuum to fill, at the moment?

No. For the simple reason that, for the last three or four years, they haven’t been the players they were before that.

Rohit has had periods at home, ’21, ’22, he was very good. But in his last 10-15 Test matches, he hasn’t been the same player. Virat has tapered off a little bit over the last three or four years.

So it’s not that you’re missing players who are giving you 500-run series, series after series. So, to some extent, we were in our minds ready for life beyond. This is not to belittle their achievements. You’ve got to be very careful of that. If you notice how cautious I’ve been, because I’m petrified of social media. So, I’m very cautious of explaining myself every time.

But great players, Virat in Test match cricket, Rohit more so in whites than in red. But you have to look at somebody moving on as an opportunity for somebody else. You have to look at it that way.

And this is a great opportunity for a KL Rahul to say, in the next three or four years, I will be the lead batter. It’s an even bigger opportunity for Yashasvi Jaiswal, who’s got one of the toughest jobs in the game as a young kid facing a new ball. And it can’t be a bigger opportunity for Shubman Gill.

See how Virat Kohli seized the opportunity when he was captain, when the opportunity presented itself, and (M.S.) Dhoni had to sit out a game. And Kohli was very young when he was captain. Shubman Gill is very young, but they’re different personalities.

So Kohli’s personality got imprinted on the side in the period from, say, ’17, ’18 to ’21, ’22, that four, five, six-year period. Interesting to see how Gill does it because the one thing that’s very common in sport and in life, the tide always comes in and takes away whatever is on the beach.

The tide will come and I will go one day, you will go one day. But it’s our job to tell the stories. Test match cricket is about unhurried storytelling. And that’s what I’m looking forward to….

What do you think are the legacies of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma? And, their relationship you’ve also seen evolve over the years. It’s a deep friendship, very rare in competitive sports…

I don’t know them as well as individuals to know how strong the relationship and the bond was, but the legacy that Kohli leaves behind, it’s a very rich legacy because if he hasn’t left behind a rich legacy, then you’re not missing him, na. There has to be a legacy. It was about being in your face as an Indian and saying, we’re going to fight you on your turf.

It wasn’t the good-boy Indian captain or the good-boy Indian player. And it’s amazing how that touched a chord with so many people in India. So, it just tells you that there was that feeling that, of course, you’re going to miss him as a bat. I mean, in his prime, I remember in 2018, he had three hundreds that people would have been happy to have hit one in a career... three in that year! So in his prime, he was by far the best player of his generation across formats.

So that always leaves a void. I mean, he’s not scored a lot of runs in his last three or four years. And yet I saw in Australia, it was clear he was struggling, it was clear he was out of form, but when he came into bat, suddenly everyone was really saying, ok, what’s going to happen? Is he going to turn it around? That’s what great players do. So, of course, you miss that.

You never know if someone’s got a year left in them or two years left with them. You don’t know that. That’s their personal view. And you respect that. He didn’t think he had much left in him. So, you say, thank you very much and well played.

With Rohit Sharma, it was as late as 2019 that he genuinely discovered himself as a Test match batter. He was fantastic on the last tour of England. He played some phenomenal innings there. That stage in career, to adapt yourself to being a red-ball opening batsman, is very difficult. And that he did it so well is a tribute to him. But with Rohit, there was also a very different style of leadership that he brought. ‘I’m not taking life too seriously and I’ll put my arm around you and we’ll chat about anything in the world’. That kind of captaincy was very different. I mean, you can’t say one was better than the other.

Watch India tour of England from 3.30pm, June 20 onwards live on Sony Sports Ten 1 & Sony Sports Ten 5 channels