Youthful fervour, grounded execution, style, polish and wholesome soundness of strokes sported by Indian newbies Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer make for a reassuring bedtime story for Team India, particularly when it is at the mouth of transition.
Titans like Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, and even Ravindra Jadeja to an extent, will not be of cricketing age by the next World Cup in 2027. Such is the bench depth of the contingent that the placement of a 360-degree hitter like Surya Kumar Yadav has become a dilemma for the team management and head coach Rahul Dravid.
The story of twin centuries involving youngsters is becoming common. At Indore against Australia, for instance, two centuries came in a matter of balls with Iyer firsting it in 86 balls and Gill, flavour of the season, following his personal fifth in 92 balls. The resilience and determination of the young Indian bat is particularly appreciable in the backdrop of the fearlessness that these youngsters display even before fearsome teams like Australia.
Talking of Australia, the post-Steve Waugh and then the post-Ricky Ponting phases in the journey of the Yellow Brigade were uncomfortable years which took away their 20/20 workbook and they also fell in and out of the 1st position as a team. India, on the other hand, have transitioned from Ganguly to MS Dhoni to Kohli to Sharma comparatively seamlessly.
And this trajectory has seen the rise of rockstars like Shubman Gill who matured from being just a fierce talent to becoming one of the best players in the world in the blink of an eye. The Indian Premier League has often thrown up talk point players, both batsmen and bowlers, but the fact that batters like Gill, Iyer, Ruturaj Gaikwad and Ishan Kishan are becoming impossible to ignore in Team India selections, makes the future look syrupy, though at the expense of the likes of 36-year-old Yadav whose position as an opener or as a middle-order batsman has become ticklish despite his mostly unparalleled brilliance.
We just saw at Indore what Surya can do with explosions engineered by him. A fifty in 29 balls with four sixes in a single over — this is Virendra Sehwag squared when it comes to volatility. But the best part of Surya is his repertoire of strikes and making space for boundaries and sixes where none exist. The other goodness of his being is that he is solid and sound and rarely fails in achieving what he has constructed in his mind.
He can destroy oppositions and unlike Sehwag is much less vulnerable. At Indore, he walked in at No. 6, but could do so only in the absence of Rohit and Kohli and see what he did to Australia! Indeed a master destructor this man of innovation with shots. If he is ignored due to the Gill-Iyer-Gaikwad-Kishan exigency for the selectors, it will, indeed, be a shame.
Also read: ODI CWC: Virender Sehwag says Suryakumar Yadav will be an X-factor for India
Returning to Gill, his runs cartwheel not only looks extremely fertile but also chinkless. His boundaries are mostly well-grounded nullifying the possibility of a catch or even a stoppage. His aerial rope tricks are grander. Once the ball leaves his bat, it finds no time or inclination to flirt with a fielder and races to its destination to find its own romance over the boundary. His propensity to use his feet while stepping out of the crease and his ability to keep going straight reminds you of so many veterans, including Sachin Tendulkar.
It’s not just about his propensity for run-building, his acumen to pace his innings, sometimes as an aggressor and sometimes stepping back as a sheet anchor to a partner in a burst, make him somewhat of a veteran in his youth and a prized possession for the Indian dressing room. Ishan Kishan is more volatile, wantonly passionate about runs and, thus a little less sorted than Gill, though there is no fault in his talent. It is the maturity quotient that puts Gill a stratosphere higher than all other fellow players.
Kishan has the ability to hit the calibre of Adam Zampa straight over his head but then he also has the unthinkingness to swing his emboldened bat wildly enough to walk. Consolidation measures are not in place yet! Not very far into the past, we had the pleasure of meeting 21-year-old Arshdeep Singh picking up decorations for his belt in the middle, against top-line teams of the world, but he didn’t attend reorientation classes to transition from T20 to ODIs and he paid the price for it. His speed with the ball was next to legendary considering his slight frame.
Then there is the squeaky new arm department that India sports nowadays. Kuldeep Yadav has peaked at pushing a man of abilities like R Ashwin to red-ball cricket, boom boom Bumrah is back after a long recuperative layoff, Shardul Thakur keeping his pace and line and Telugu bidda Mohammed Siraj showing his prowess like a magician having fun in Lanka — World Cup and beyond of Indian cricket is in good hands. Much like Tennis, where the slams transited well from legend Federer to the youthful brilliance of one Master Carlos Alcaraz.
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