Sunday night asserted the inevitable transition that India’s T20 cricket is going through. In the last six months, Shubman Gill has become the face of that transition. Near midnight at the Chinnaswamy stadium while silencing the vociferous crowd in Bengaluru, he screamed he was ready to take over the mantle from the veterans who have carried Indian batting for a decade now.
Virat Kohli made a curt statement after his unbeaten 101 off 61 at the broadcaster’s mid-innings interview: “A lot of people think my T20 cricket is declining. But I don’t think so. Strike rates depend on the situations you bat in. I find ways to hit gaps and boundaries.” There’s little debating that Kohli’s was an innings of mastery over his skills. In a couple of hours, though, Gill trumped him with an unbeaten 104 off 52 balls. It’s ironic that Kohli himself declared Gill to lead the next generation in one of his social media posts last week.
