Gill — steering India’s fortunes

In the 55-year history of men’s One-Day International Cricket, there have been only 12 double-centuries, three of them from one individual alone. In no more than a handful of the 4,980 ODIs to date, including game two of the three-match series between India and Afghanistan on Wednesday, has more than one double-centurion figured. Lucknow threw up a rare, but not first, instance of three men who have scored more than 200 in a single ODI innings being part of the same playing XI.

Until Sachin Tendulkar first touched the 200-mark, against South Africa in Indore in February 2010, no one had managed a tryst with the coveted landmark. Several had got frightfully close, not least Saeed Anwar who smashed 194 in the Independence Cup league fixture against Tendulkar’s side in Chennai in 1997. It needed the genius of Tendulkar — fittingly, most will aver — for that record to be set straight.

Indian domination

Suppositions that once the Promised Land had been reached, the floodgates would open have remained unfounded, because in the 16 years since, there have been only 11 further scores of 200 or more. Indians have accounted for six of those 11 — with Virender Sehwag following his hero into the record books before a currently active threesome joined that exclusive club.

Rohit Sharma, the former skipper, is in a league of his own with three 200-plus knocks including a gargantuan 264, the highest individual score in an ODI innings, against Sri Lanka at the celebrated Eden Gardens. Just when Rohit might have started to feel lonely, Ishan Kishan, unexpectedly, broke through with a phenomenal 210 against Bangladesh in Chattogram in December 2022. A month later, it was the turn of Shubman Gill to create his own slice of history, in Hyderabad against New Zealand.

Such is the embarrassment of batting riches at India’s disposal that, until recently, they haven’t been able to find a place in the larger squad, let alone the playing XI, of prodigal son Kishan, who owes his current No. 3 position to the hamstring injury that has temporarily put Virat Kohli out of commission.

Rohit’s a past master whose deeds are well chronicled. On Wednesday, he showed glimpses of his best form with a sparkling 48 that was cut short by a Rashid Khan googly that homed in on his stumps via the inside edge. The reasonable gathering at the Ekana International Stadium which had braved a scorching June sun was gutted at Rohit’s dismissal because clearly, and especially with Kohli not around, most of them had come to watch the graceful right-hander in action. They had to make do with just an appetiser, but little did they — or anyone else — know when Rohit made his slow walk back to the dressing room that the main course was just ahead of them.

Gill and Kishan are the best of mates, an odd couple because the former is a very serious sort of individual while Kishan, despite becoming a little more controlled in the last couple of years, is a fun-loving free spirit who livens up the atmosphere wherever he goes.

Insiders have spoken with admiration and respect of how Kishan was the livewire even when he wasn’t a part of the playing group, ensuring that any air of negativity was effortlessly and immediately dissipated without treading on toes or ruffling feathers. Kishan is now a less visibly playful version of his previous self, but clearly, he is still the entertainer who carries the reputation of being an excellent mimic — and no one, we have been informed, absolutely no one is excluded from his mischief-list.

Kishan’s remarkable return

Kishan’s reintegration with the national side in January after more than two years in the international wilderness is one of the great stories of modern-day Indian cricket. Since his return to the limited-overs set-up, he has reiterated his value time and again, providing the impetus in the T20 World Cup that India so desperately needed in the early stages and then holding his own even towards the business end when Sanju Samson walked away with all the encomiums.

He showcased his leadership skills, honed in domestic cricket with Jharkhand whom he steered last season the T20 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, when he was the stand-in captain in IPL for Sunrisers Hyderabad with Pat Cummins awaiting the green signal from Cricket Australia and has been irrepressible with the bat, the clincher coming in the form of his second ODI hundred when, alongside Gill, he annihilated the over-matched Afghan outfit.

Gill is in one of those extended purple patches that defy logical explanation. Oh wait, the logical explanation is that he has worked terribly hard at ironing out kinks and adding to his repertoire, thereby becoming a more complete and rounded batter equally felicitous off front foot and back, on off-side and on, against pace and spin. He has also become a fitter, more driven and intense version of himself though a chronic neck injury, which has already reared its ugly head from time to time, will come back to haunt him going forward as well.

From the time he made his Test debut in Melbourne in December 2020, bang smack in the middle of the Covid pandemic, it was clear that the world was Gill’s oyster provided he stuck to the straight and the narrow. At the Under-19 World Cup in New Zealand in January 2018, Gill had showcased his fluency, batting at a level way above the rest of his peers; Gill was identified then as one for the future, with the caveat ‘if he continued to progress along expected lines’.

By then, there already had been numerous instances of Under-19 ‘stalwarts’ losing their way when they graduated to the senior ranks, for one reason or the other. Why, even Gill and India’s captain at the aforementioned World Cup, Prithvi Shaw, himself is now on the outer looking in, this despite celebrating his Test debut in October 2018 with a sparkling century against West Indies in Rajkot. So, if there was an asterisk against Gill’s name, it wasn’t so much because one doubted his skills and his mental fortitude, but more as a matter of cautionary routine.

Conviction

Gill initially blew hot and cold, but he was never going to fade away into oblivion, he was never going to self-destruct, that much was apparent. That he sought, and got, the No. 3 slot in the Test batting line-up in the Caribbean in July 2023, showed that he had the courage of conviction to approach the think-tank (of captain Rohit and head coach Rahul Dravid) and ask for what he thought was his best spot. It took him a few innings to start firing, but once he made a century in Visakhapatnam against England in February 2024, the classy right-hander was up and running. In grand style.

Within the decision-making rungs, Gill had already been identified as the leader-in-waiting — Prince is the moniker that has stuck to him — and Ajit Agarkar’s panel wasted little time in naming him Rohit’s successor in the five-day game when the Mumbaikar called it quits last May.

In his first series as skipper, Gill responded with spectacular prolificity. Armed with the more complete game we alluded to earlier, he racked up runs for fun; a mountainous 754 runs from five Tests, and four centuries (he hadn’t scored a Test hundred outside Asia before previously) was evidence enough that he could separate Gill the batter from Gill the captain.

The 2-2 scoreline with a young side minus the retired trio of Rohit, Kohli and R. Ashwin held out the promise that he would grow into a tactically more astute skipper, a promise affirmed by the growing strides he made as a strategist as the Test series unfolded.

Just about the only blip, and it is a big one, is his unexpected recall and equally abrupt ouster from the T20I set-up. Some might say it is only a matter of time before Gill breaks back into the shortest format, given his outstanding run in IPLs historically and especially this year, when he finished the second highest run-getter behind Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. But how will the selectors find a place for him in a top order where apart from Samson and Kishan and Sooryavanshi and Abhishek Sharma, a host of others are jostling for attention?

Never mind. For now, Gill is the Test and ODI captain, and that’s where his focus should be. This month alone, following his grand run in the IPL which yielded 732 runs, Gill’s scores against Afghanistan read 126, 84 not out and now 154, a ridiculously unhurried, untroubled, unprepossessing contribution in the Lucknow cauldron when he smashed 22 fours and two sixes to ensure he didn’t have to expend too much energy running between the wickets.

The first of these three big scores came in the one-off Test in New Chandigarh; the two other efforts have come in the ODIs, both earning him Player-of-the-Match awards. It won’t be fanciful to assert that the only reason he doesn’t have a hat-trick of international hundreds against Afghanistan in the last fortnight is because the visitors simply didn’t put enough runs on the board in the truncated (25-overs-a-side) first ODI in Dharamsala last Saturday.

With due respect to the Afghans, India’s tougher challenges are ahead, both immediately and in the not-so-distant future. While the larger goal will be the next 50-over World Cup, in Africa in less than a year and a half’s time, there are other enervating battles in store.

India are languishing mid-table in the World Test Championship, their reputation as tigers at home in tatters following dramatic meltdowns against first New Zealand and then South Africa. Two-Test tours of Sri Lanka and New Zealand lie in wait before the year is out; India need victories and points as much as they need their captain to set the tone as lead batter. Those two sojourns, as well as the five-Test home face-off against Australia from January, will go a long way towards shaping Gill’s leadership legacy even at this early stage of his captaincy stint.

Sole point of focus

The World Cup will be the sole point of focus once the Australia series is done and dusted. Only Kapil Dev and Mahendra Singh Dhoni have held aloft the ODI World Cup trophy. It was close but no cigar for Rohit at home in 2023.

Gill has a ways to go before he can start dreaming about World Cup glory as player and captain, but who can blame him if that idea has started to take the faintest of forms?