World Cup 2023: Will Shubman Gill step up to his potential against England?

Star India opener Shubman Gill has become the fastest player to reach the 2,000 runs mark in world history surpassing South Africa legend Hashim Amla. Gill has also five centuries in a calendar year, the most by any player for India, but yet to score big in the ongoing World Cup 2023, writes Meenakshi Rao.

Lucknow: The mature young Shubman Gill, who has been the toast of the new blood in Team India, with five hundreds this year, is yet to make a mark in his debut World Cup. But you watch him bat either in the middle or at nets and it becomes doubly clear why he is a batter the team bets on, that, too, as an opener giving company to skipper Rohit Sharma.

His shots are mostly grounded despite him having a repertoire of cuts, slashes and pulls in his closet. He has the knack of steering scores in the upward direction with the surety and confidence of a vintage warrior at a callow 24. Unlike his age-groupers Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer, he seldom gives in to audacity at the risk of fatality and yet can be fast and furious. His footwork at the crease and the tapestry of shots he can engineer have already been fielding the chirp around the excellence and soundness of this rising star.

The maturity he lends to his bat could be seen at the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana stadium at Lucknow on Friday in the nets where his bat had a long and interesting conversation with short balls. His bottom-handed bat technique makes him resemble Virat Kohli, but the rocket fuel he pushes into his bat makes him a prodigy, who can compete with Rohit’s lazy aggression.

Gill, the youngest gun to score a double century in ODIs, has the highest T20I score and is the fastest player to score 2,000 runs in just 38 ODIs. It is this promise that the team will be looking for when he steps out on Sunday to display his excellence against defending champions England.

After missing the first two games of the World Cup due to dengue, Gill returned to the middle with average scores to his name. Twenty-six against Pakistan, a well-constructed 53 against Bangladesh, and just 16 against New Zealand are no Gill-like figures, and no one better than him would want to shed this alien mediocrity as soon as possible.

What better way to do so than to come into currency against England on Sunday? At nets on a sizzling Friday afternoon, the cameras followed Gill steering the short balls to perfection as six of his teammates, including bowlers Shami, Siraj and Shardul, besides Kishan and Ravindra Jadeja. All of them batted as well as bowled to keep the back end batting away from dust.

Interestingly, Surya Kumar Yadav was conspicuous by his absence, considering the possible absence of an injured Hardik Pandya and a changed team combination driven by compulsions.