The Future Is Now

Thirteen is the age when most kids hit puberty but for this kid from Mohali, it was the age at which he hit an unbeaten double ton on his U-16 debut for Punjab. In the same year, he manifested his penchant for big runs as he went on to score 351 in an inter-district tournament and starred in a record opening partnership of 587 runs. He was also felicitated by BCCI as the U-16 player of the year, the award which he won for the next year as well. While at the age of thirteen most kids shape their dreams, their peer was living one, as being invited to the BCCI awards meant sharing the stage with the then vice-captain and also his idol, Virat Kohli.

At eighteen, he literally came off age. Having made his first-class debut, Gill announced himself on the big stage by registering his maiden century in only his second Ranji Trophy match. He went on to represent India in the U-19 World Cup in 2018. India U-19 & India A coach, Rahul Dravid, having seen young Gill develop from close quarters vested upon him the responsibility which Dravid himself carried out for the national side for a long time – batting at the most crucial position in the line-up and being the deputy-in-chief. Little did he know that his prodigy would not only replicate his CWC 1999 feat of being the highest run-scorer in the tournament but also architect a World Cup victory for India. It never rains but it pours, a saying which Gill would have concurred with at that time. A day before the semi-final of 2018 U-19 World Cup against Pakistan, he got picked by the KKR franchise at the IPL auction for a whopping 1.8 crores. The top dollar can easily get into an eighteen-year old’s head, but Gill believed that he had a bigger role to play in the realm of Indian cricket as he went on to score a match-winning hundred against the arch-rivals. It was as if nothing could go wrong for Master Gill.

Shubman Gill’s career, which seemed to be progressing at a breakneck speed ventured into a briar’s patch when India’s then Chief Selector MSK Prasad decided to bring him in the scheme of things for the national side. Retrospectively speaking, Gill found himself in a real Catch-22 fix. KL Rahul’s faux pass on the national television opened the door for the 19-year-old, who was flown into New Zealand in early 2019 as a replacement, where he made his ODI debut. Alas, someone forgot to knock on the wood for a young man who himself would have thought that all of this was too good to be true. It has now been 16 long months, 25 ODIs, 25 T20s and 9 test matches since the ‘promised one’ played in the Indian colours. This fact can deceive someone into thinking that Gill might have lost his Midas touch hence the non-selection, but the recent history suggests otherwise. In the opportunities that he got, he exhibited adaptability at the IPL, consistency in the domestic tournaments and maturity beyond his years in the India A tours.

Let us delve into Gill’s first IPL, a tournament of many firsts for the young man. It was the first time that Gill, a top-order first-class batsman, was playing T20 cricket and in his first game itself, he was handed a Herculean assignment of looking after the backend of the innings. Now picture this, you are an eighteen-year-old who has just been handed a T20 debut cap by coach Jacques Kallis, arguably the best all-rounder the world has ever seen, in front of a gargantuan crowd which is very well aware that you have a reputation to keep – an average of 104.46 in Youth ODIs (Sir Donald Bradman’s average of 99.94 in Test cricket is the next best among players with 1000+ runs in any format) & Man of the Tournament in U-19 World Cup, to name a few, and then captain Dinesh Karthik walks towards you and exhorts you to perform a role which never got you any of your previously mentioned accolades and a role which has to be now performed at the highest standards against the who-is-who of international cricket. Dizzy already? But then Gill was never an average Joe. In the 2018 IPL season, he played the role of a finisher in 9 out of the 13 outings, registering a healthy tournament average of 33.83 and a strike rate of 146.04.

Gill attributed his adaptability to a childhood spent playing with older kids who often used their seniority to bat ahead of him. Gill was asked how he prepared for facing only six-odd balls when he bats at No. 7. “To face those six balls, you have to practice at least 100 balls at nets,” he told kkr.in. “If you practice less, you’ll lack confidence even to hit four out of those six balls. The mentality shouldn’t be to practice less just because you are going to face just those number of balls. So, to make the most of those six balls, one must utilise their net sessions.” This spoke volumes about a young man’s work ethics. Owing to IPL’s vast viewership, the world in large finally saw the boy whom they kept reading about in the sports section of the morning newspaper – a poetry in motion, who didn’t lose shape while taking the attack to the opposition. Oh boy those strokes would have purred the MCC members on the first morning of the test match as they seem to be coming straight out of textbook chapter 9, page number 10. He seems to have far more time to decrypt a bowler’s line-length and has this innate ability to graciously hit the same delivery to all parts of the ground – it was like seeing a young padawan rising above himself, showcasing the force in him to his Jedi Master.

At the back of a prolific domestic season and maiden India call-up came the 2019 season of the IPL. Gill in this one-year time-lapse scored at an average of 104 in Ranji Trophy which included a mammoth 268 against an experienced Tamil Nadu side. He averaged 84 in Deodhar Trophy, the highlight of which was his 106* coming in a high scoring run chase against India A. He averaged 60 in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, in which he scored 1 hundred and 3 fifties. In the 2018 A tour of New Zealand, he displayed grit uncharacteristic of his age in a 4-day first-class match, which added impetus to his nomination to the national side. ICC named him in the list of eight players to look out for in IPL 2019.

Of the many reasons that catapulted KKR to the play-offs in the 2018 season, one was playing Sunil Narine as an opener, the formula which the team management going into the new season didn’t want to tinker with. The other was having Uthappa and Rana play at 3-4. The rigidity on this tactic which was perceived as a proven formula later proved to be the downfall for the franchise and a loss of opportunity for Shubman Gill, who like Andre Russel was being wasted far down the order for three-quarters of the tournament. This waste of match-winning resources seemed obvious to everyone but KKR’s team management. Regarding Gill, KKR’s captain Dinesh Karthik exclaimed: “India is obsessed with novelties, and even I like novelties, but I have to look at Knight Riders as a whole and not just one bright kid on the block”. KKR eventually did make a change at their fag end of the tournament, when the pursuit transformed into a wild goose chase but for Gill, it was an opportunity he had been long waiting for and he billed upon it by scoring 3 fifties in 4 innings as an opener. He was adjudged ‘Emerging Player of the Tournament’ which takes into account not only the votes of the illustrious commentary panel but also the online votes of the cricket enthusiasts around the globe. Gill had finally got a stamp of approval from the cricketing community and was expected by all to re-join the Indian setup post their World Cup Campaign.

While the Indian team was still recuperating from their self-inflicted emotional wounds of a failed World Cup crusade, the colts were dispatched to the Caribbean Islands for an A tour to set up the senior team’s arrival for a full-fledged tour. As was foreseeable, Shubman Gill finished the limited-overs leg as the top run-getter with an average of 54.50 and strike rate of 98.19, scoring 3 fifties in 4 outings for which he was named man of the series, as India A won the series 4-1. In the three four-day match series, he scored at an average of 122 which included a double century. MSK Prasad, who many blame for India’s sustained middle-order woes, which proved to be the Achilles heel in India’s infamous exit from the semi-finals of the World Cup, made yet another controversial call of leaving out Gill from all the three squads. It was told that Gill was being considered for the test matches but instead KL Rahul, who was coming at the back of a torrid Test Series down-under was given a longer rope. At the selection meeting, regarding Gill’s non-selection, chief selector MSK Prasad said, “He went to New Zealand when KL Rahul was suspended and now Rahul has come back so he (Gill) is in the waiting list.” Gill did express his disappointment at that time. “I was waiting for the Indian senior team to be announced on Sunday and I expected to be selected for at least one of the squads,” Gill told CricketNext. “It was disappointing not to get picked but I am not going to spend time thinking over it. I’ll keep scoring runs and performing to the best of my ability to impress the selectors.”

Next up was the series against the Proteas at home. Amid calls for Shubman Gill, there were louder calls for India’s World Cup hero Rohit Sharma to start playing regularly in the whites. If Gill’s absence in India’s Test squad for the Windies tour was a pain point for the Indian fans, the agony was even more excruciating to not see India’s most prolific limited over batsman since 2015, having scored more centuries than King Kohli, (28 international centuries by Rohit versus 24 international centuries by Kohli, in limited over formats) to not represent the country in the highest form of the game. Amidst pressure from the cricket fraternity, MSK Prasad finally stopped turning a blind eye to the drawing on the board, he could have very well been banished if he didn’t respect the insurmountable records of one veteran and an exemplary promise of one rookie. Gill got a maiden call up in the Indian Test squad, who came in as a replacement for KL Rahul whose misery against the red ball was mortifying for the purists to see, but then this didn’t mean an automatic qualification to the XI. It was Rohit Sharma’s time to open the innings and no one could have argued against it, while his partner would be Mayank Agarwal who didn’t do much wrong in his two-test series career so far. There was no place for Gill in India’s experienced middle order. So, it happened that Gill carried drinks for his team throughout the test series in which the Indian openers, Sharma and Agarwal piled up 869 runs in just 4 innings together at an average of 132.25 and 85 respectively, which included 5 individual centuries in between them. This meant that going into the next Test series against Bangladesh, which included a historic day-night Test match at Eden Gardens, Gill will be in the squad only as a backup opener.

With 360 championship points in the kitty, India’s next assignment was a two-match Test series against the Kiwis on their turf. Gill, as usual, was made to play two four-day matches for India A, in which unsurprisingly he scored a century in the first unofficial test and a double century in the second, his average read a mere 211.5. In the build-up to the Test series, Rohit Sharma suffered a calf injury in a scintillating T20 series against the home nation basis which he was ruled out of the Test series. Surely, nothing can now stop Gill from making his test debut! Lo & behold, his captain from the U-19 World Cup, Prithvi Shaw having served his eight-month ban for a doping violation, was now available for selection. What transpired was that it was Shaw who got to open for India in both the Test matches ahead of Gill, his partner being Agarwal, who in 2019 had hit two double centuries and deservedly featured as an opener in ICC’s Test XI. Shaw got a nod ahead of a man who had been sitting on the bench for the last 5 Test matches, who proved his mettle against swing bowling on the lively pitches of Lincoln and Christchurch in the A tour which Shaw was not even a part of. Why? It was because Shaw had scored a hundred on his debut, a debut which he made before Gill. Technically speaking, Shaw was never dropped from the squad, he was made unavailable, firstly due to an injury and then due to a doping violation, so if Gill gets picked, then on paper, you are dropping Shaw but you cannot drop Shaw because 16 months back he scored a century on debut. Gill missed out because the team management wanted to be politically correct! With due respect to Shaw’s talent, the selection strategy should have been horses for courses, as it is well documented that compact Gill is methodologically far more suited to tackle swing bowling than expansive Shaw. The result, Shaw averaged just 24.5 in his four cumulative outings wherein he failed to accumulate three-digit runs while Gill wistfully saw the view from the pavilion. India got whitewashed 2-0 and they got a rude awakening that they are not ‘the Test team’ they believed to be, but they are just a team like many other.

Having written about the lack of opportunities for Gill in the whites, let us shift our focus to the limited over formats. Team India in the run-up to the proposed T20 World Cup played a sleuth of T20Is in the middle and it looked evident that Gill is not in their plans. It seemed that he was being looked at as a player for longer formats but when the time came to blood in the new talent in the longer limited over format, just like KKR’s team management, the Indian team management exhibited heavy inertia with their top five – Dhawan, Rohit, Virat, Iyer & Rahul. It was curious for the team management to not experiment in ODIs, the very format for which captain Kohli went on the record saying that he didn’t consider them too relevant as the focus was on the World Test Championship and the T20 World Cup. Despite such a stance, he displayed his full batting arsenal in the home ODIs. The team management can be seen trudging the same old rocky road which on the final turn of the World Cup pushed them into a dark abyss. This pitfall proved to be fatal, the post-mortem revealed that it was lack of long-term planning which did India’s undoing.

India after Shikhar Dhawan’s thumb fracture in the World Cup consistently struggled to field their playing eleven, there were too many players who didn’t have enough games under their belt, who weren’t experienced enough in the roles handed over to them, who previously didn’t get exposed enough to match-saving situations, who didn’t get time to commit enough mistakes, the time to introspect and raise their games, they were half-baked products in a Michelin Star restaurant run by just 2 gourmet chefs – Rohit and Virat, and if they fail to turn up on a particular day, the restaurant would collapse like a house of cards. The numbers don’t lie and back this compelling argument. Following are the number of ODI innings which few of the selected batsmen batted in before the 2019 edition and post the 2015 edition of the CWC – Mayank Agarwal (0), Rishabh Pant (4), Vijay Shankar (5), KL Rahul (13), Dinesh Karthik (17) & Hardik Pandya (29). When India lost Rohit & Kohli early in the semi-finals, the responsibility fell upon the junior artists who hadn’t even completed their dress-rehearsals, no wonder they happened to just relay the baton of responsibility to the experience down the order – Dhoni & Jadeja. While fitness and skillsets are important, which India had plenty of going into the World Cup, the cog which was seen missing was that of ‘match awareness’.

The team management must start looking ahead to the future and earnestly begin their preparations for the 2023 CWC. If currently, there is no place for Gill in the top five, bat him down the order, a role which he is aware of, in the place of the 35-year-old yet a regular feature in the side, Kedar Jadhav. An eye must be kept on the often-resurfacing injuries of the 34-year-old Shikhar Dhawan, who to his credit hasn’t done much wrong but then he is not getting any younger and his injuries have in the past impacted team’s results at crucial junctures.

If a player of the pedigree of Gill has to be nurtured, he needs to be carried in the XI so that when the time comes, he is aware of his game and has the wisdom to tackle the varying predicaments of the game –  this was the magic that we saw missing in the class of 2019. The Indian team management need look no further than the World Champions England who after their 2015 WC rout demonstrated agility by investing in young guns and having a roadmap laid out for them. In the near future, the tour that matters is the one Down Under and just like how the 1992 tour of Australia transformed young Sachin and the 2012 tour evolved mercurial Kohli, the next promised one must not get bereft of this golden opportunity, which many mortals will spin it as the test of character or the trial by fire.  A 16-month limbo is a long-long time in a cricketer’s otherwise short career, the talent needs to be tapped & tapped now than to be kept squandering away. One must not break a bird’s wing and then later tell it to fly.

More than a decade ago, Lakhwinder Singh convinced of his son’s talent took a leap of faith by leaving behind his agricultural lands in Fazilka to migrate to a small rented plot near PCA Stadium in Mohali. A decision, taken by a father, could very well go down in the history of spacetime as the decision that created a ripple across the fabric of the universe. The very ripple which ten years down the line led to the ushering in of a new era for Indian cricket, and if it happens then Lakhwinder Singh will live his unfulfilled dream of representing the country through the eyes of his son. The future is now, and team India must embrace it!