We start off with the Indian captain and the new legend - The Prince, as he is called. The successor to the King. Yes, we are indeed talking about the current Test captain of India, Shubman Gill. The seeds of his talent were sown as early as the 2018 Under-19 World Cup, where the vice-captain finished as the second leading run scorer overall. 8 years later, the youngster has developed into a magnificent adult, ready to step into the shoes of the legend, Virat Kohli.
The key element to Gill’s batting is the way he bats. Stylish. Effortless. Languid, one might add. And in doing so, he has maintained a strike rate in excess of 80 across formats in the last four years. That shows how well he combines defence with attack.
A fluent 91 in India’s historic series win at ‘The Gabba in 2021, the then youngest in 2023 to score an ODI double ton at the age of 23, and a fine run in the 2023 ODI World Cup and the 2024 home Test series against England paved the way for him to taste captaincy. That came during the 2024 IPL season, where, although he started poorly, he has established a niche in the next 2 years.
Accordingly, the time seems ripe now for The Prince to take the reins of the country. In the last 4 years, Gill has scored more than 6000 runs across formats, with an average of 47.42. But that average swells to 66.3 when he has been the captain. So, the signs are there.
His captaincy record speaks thus – 146 matches | 94 wins. That’s a decent start with a win percentage of nearly 65. Picked astutely by Rahul Dravid in his early teens, Gill repaid the faith by being honoured with the BCCI award for the best junior cricketer in 2013-14 and 2014-15. The 2018 Under-19 World Cup was his first major step in being recognized. And the rest, as they say, became history.
Gill’s hunger for runs can be seen from this stat – 53 out of his 179 innings in international cricket have seen scores of 50 or more. That means he is touching 50 roughly every 3 innings. Delving further, in Test cricket, 11 out of Gill's 20 fifty-plus scores are centuries. That shows how good his conversion rate is, and he doesn’t throw away starts. The advent of T20 does make it difficult for batters to play risk-free cricket, but Gill's style shows that a batter with strong technique can play attacking cricket without taking too many risks. India and cricket, in general, would be honoured to see The Prince show his class over the next decade at least. Amen.
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