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ODI skipper Gill must make the most of Rohit, Virat’s presence
Shubman Gill, at 26, is set to lead India in ODIs, with a strong win record and veteran support from Sharma and Kohli as they prepare for future challenges.
Kolkata: There hasn’t been a younger India captain since, well, MS Dhoni. But cricket’s two oldest formats hardly overlap these days, and the next ODI World Cup is two years away.
So Shubman Gill shouldn’t exactly feel the heat as he prepares to lead India in Australia for a three-match ODI series, beginning Sunday. And while the format may be dying, there is no denying the legacy that still needs careful shepherding— a nearly 70% win record in the last 36 months, 2023 World Cup finalists and Champions Trophy winners this March.
Ideally, India would have liked to pick up from where they had left in Dubai. But the captaincy needed a reboot, largely because at 38, Rohit Sharma can’t be a sure-shot pick for 2027. Given his fitness levels, Virat Kohli’s future may be subject to less conjecture but he too isn’t guaranteed a spot, certainly not when the selectors are bracing for a future without either of them.
Despite this slight issue, India are a thriving one-day unit, packing in the experience of Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja and Mohammed Siraj, with the likes of Yashasvi Jaiswal, Arshdeep Singh, Washington Sundar and Nitish Kumar Reddy ready to grab opportunities.
Gill is obviously an-eye-on-the-future choice to lead this bunch, partly because there is no one else as young as him playing in all formats, and partly because at 26, he has already shown he belongs at this level.
Eight hundreds, including a career-best of 208, 15 fifties, and a staggering average of 59.04—Gill’s numbers underscore the rare ability of accumulating runs by not attempting anything crazy. Against the spinner, he occasionally steps out and targets long-on but Gill’s game is broadly built on the boring routine of taking singles and keeping the scoreboard ticking.
A very straight bat, soft hands and an impressive back-foot game allows Gill to control the tempo and raise it whenever he feels so, making him almost a complete ODI player who can breeze through large swathes of the innings with percentage cricket. And he does all this maintaining a strike rate of 99.56.
Where it might get tricky is how Gill has to soon navigate a period where India won’t play many ODIs since the T20 World Cup is almost upon us. The IPL follows soon after and then it’s basically a hurried buildup to South Africa, 2027, leaving India with probably a year of international cricket.
For any captain, this is too little time to put in place a roadmap and build a distinct brand of leadership while trying to figure out a way of keeping Sharma and Kohli in the scheme of things as well as run backup plans without either of them should that eventuality surface.
For Gill to be on top of this phase, he must be his own man. But on the flipside, he will also have two former captains to lean on for advice, not at all a bad position to start with. In fact when you look back at the last two decades, that has been the most notable aspect of any captaincy transition in Indian cricket.
When Dhoni had become captain, Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid were still five years from retirement. His captaincy was distinctly different from Kohli’s, yet there was never any doubt that Kohli’s leadership benefited from having Dhoni behind the stumps. In a similar vein, Gill must find his best footing deriving every bit of strength from Sharma and Kohli.
In Kohli, Gill gets the best ODI batter, possibly the most decorated finisher, a motivator and an unabashed instigator. Sharma’s insight will be invaluable, as will be the methodical madness he introduces to the batting at the top.
“The way we play the game in the powerplay is quite different to each other,” Gill had elaborated on his partnership with Sharma, during the Champions Trophy. “Rohit bhai likes to play more aerial shots, and tries to hit those big sixes. And I like to play along the ground, and I like to pierce those gaps. In between, if I see the bowler is under pressure, I like to go over the circle.
“I think that’s the hallmark of us as a pair. We score boundaries with different shots. The bowlers really have to think which areas to target for us, because the areas we play the shots are different from each other.”
Now who wouldn’t want an encore of that?
