It’s been over five years since Shubman Gill produced a player-of-the-tournament award winning show at the 2018 ICC ODI World Cup as India lifted the trophy. Today, he’s been widely projected as the next big thing in Indian cricket and Gill’s performances in the past few months have surely backed up those claims.
Be it his stunning ODI double-century earlier this year or a blistering show during IPL 2023 that saw him rack up close to 900 runs with the help of three centuries and four fifties, Gill has been making the right noises.
Gill has surely shown he has the potential to be the next big batting sensation from India and with the team management now being advised to start grooming future leaders, is the youngster a strong candidate?
The mind harks back to Virat Kohli’s rise and subsequent appointment as the India captain. Could something similar be replicated with Gill?
Former India selector Bhupinder Singh Sr thinks it’s too early to saddle Gill with such responsibility and thinks the rising star should be allowed to do well with the bat first.
“I will not rush him at this juncture because we want to see him as the next batting legend of the country,” Bhupinder told Hindustan Times. “If things go well, which I am sure will, he can be the next batting sensation from this country. He has that game, aura and personality. In that process, later on, we can see him develop as a good captain also.”
Besides Gill, there are few other candidates for the top job including Jasprit Bumrah, KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant and Hardik Pandya. Out of these names, Pandya is the only one who hasn’t been part of Test setup for some time now.
Considering Pandya’s IPL success as captain and the fact that he’s been regularly leading the Indian T20I after the last year’s world cup in Australia, makes him an automatic choice in the shortest format.
Where India needs to do brainstorming is in the ODIs and Tests where currently 36-year-old Rohit Sharma is the captain.
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