Shubman Gill has finally come of age. His sublime strokeplay during his recent knocks — his maiden T20I hundred in Ahmedabad on Wednesday is one of them — has virtually sealed his place as India’s all-format opener.
The most striking aspect of Gill’s 126 off 63 balls at the Motera stadium was that he never showed any signs of slogging and every shot was eye-catching. Notching up the highest individual T20I score by an Indian, the technically sound and temperamentally classy batter made his claims for a permanent spot in the shortest format of the game even stronger.
There was a time when he was supposed to play the role of an anchor at the top while others went about hoicking the ball over the fielders. But on Wednesday, the Rahul Tripathis and Hardik Pandyas were content with rotating the strike with Gill.
After having cemented his place as an ODI opener with a stunning double-century against New Zealand in the first ODI in Hyderabad, he put to rest all talk about Prithvi Shaw replacing him at the top.
Gill, 23, didn’t do much in the first two T20Is on pitches that were criticised by the Indian camp. But in Ahmedabad, he showed he has transformed his game to match the pace of T20s. He scored 34 in the Powerplay, got to his first fifty off 35 balls, and zoomed to his second fifty off only 19 deliveries.
Not without reason Virat Kohli showered praise on Gill, who broke his record for India’s highest score in T20Is. The former captain took to Instagram to share a story with a photo of himself alongside Gill, captioned, “Sitaara (Star). The future is here”.
“It feels good when you practise and it pays off,” Gill said during Wednesday’s postmatch presentation where he received the Player of the Match award. “I was backing myself to get the big ones, but unfortunately it didn’t happen for me in the Sri Lanka series and in the first couple of matches here (against New Zealand).
“I mean everyone has a different technique to hit the sixes. The talk with Hardik bhai...he told me before the match and even before the series, ‘just play your game and bat how you normally do. You don’t have to do anything extra’, and he kept on backing me.”
Pandya too lauded Gill’s efforts. “He’s technically so sound that it’s very easy for him,” he said of Gill. “It’s just a switch he needs to do to play T20, ODI and Test cricket because he has the game for all formats.
“So, to be honest, he’s not someone who does not need to play behind the wicket because of the kind of shots he can play all around in front(of the wicket) with the gaps. He’s actually one of those batsmen along with Surya who can hit good balls and make them a bad ball. Having said that, it’s just tremendous seeing his growth and it has been very fruitful for me. He’s a kid who has a right head on his shoulders.”
