It is a reality of modern cricket that the logical next step on Shubman Gill’s zig-zagging path to superstardom should take him from an IPL season defined by his brilliance directly into a World Test Championship final.
It has been eight days since Gill was part of a Gujarat Titans side beaten by Chennai Super Kings in a delayed and rain-affected showpiece, a fate scarcely deserved by the tournament’s outstanding player, but the 23-year-old has been afforded little time to dwell as he prepares to open the batting against Australia’s much-heralded attack at The Oval this week.
“That's the fun about it,” Gill said yesterday, the kind of attitude that stems from a heady combination of youth and success. “Last week we were playing something completely different with a different atmosphere and that is the challenge. That is what is exciting about Test cricket."
Gill was part of the India team beaten by New Zealand in the inaugural WTC final two years ago, making only 36 runs across two innings in the game at Southampton, but goes into the sequel with an aura and stature transformed by a truly remarkable six months and a run that has confirmed the long-held assumption that the batter is best-placed to succeed Virat Kohli as simultaneous poster boy and doyen of Indian cricket. That, it goes without saying, is not a part-time gig.
Since the start of the year, Gill has scored international centuries in all three formats, made the highest-ever T20i score by an Indian player and become the youngest batter to make an ODI double-hundred. Tellingly, though, it is franchise cricket that has most explicitly reignited faith in a Sachin Tendulkar-Kohli-Gill lineage, the latter having made three centuries in four innings in the lead-up to the IPL final, the second of those in direct response to one from Kohli.
With a World Cup on home soil to come in the autumn, now is not a bad time to be an Indian star ascending, but this week’s one-off against an Australia side at least partially distracted by a looming Ashes series represents a more immediate chance to end a global trophy drought that stretches, inexplicably, back to the 2011 World Cup.
That was a tournament pivotal in establishing Kohli’s early legend, the victorious campaign captained by MS Dhoni but spearheaded by Tendulkar. Kohli, too, is among the rank and file these days and, for Gill, the parallels are clear.
