With a total of 430 runs in the Edgbaston Test against England, Indian captain Shubman Gill had posted the second-highest aggregate in a Test behind England batsman Graham Gooch’s aggregate of 456 runs against India in 1990. The 25-year-old has also become the Indian batsman with highest score in England with his knock of 269 runs in the first innings at Edgbaston surpassing Sunil Gavaskar’s score of 221 runs scored against England at The Oval in 1979. Former England batsman Mark Ramprakash has termed Gill as someone who can fill in the boots of the Fab Four quartet of Virat Kohli, Steve Smith, Joe Root and Kane Williamson in Test cricket.
“We are coming to the end of a period that has been dominated by the so-called Fab Four – Virat Kohli, Joe Root, Steve Smith and Kane Williamson – and the search has been on for players who can take over. Shubman Gill has shown he can fill those boots and in a wonderfully orthodox style: he plays all formats and is brilliantly adaptable, but with a foundation of classic technique,” Ramprakash wrote in his column for The Guardian.
Gill’s knock of 269 in the first innings and 161 in the second innings at Edgbaston meant that the Punjab youngster became the first batsman in Test cricket history to score a double century and a 150 in a Test. It also meant that the Indian became the first Indian captain to score a double century and a century in the same Test apart from becoming the second player to hit three hundreds in his first two Tests as a captain after Virat Kohli. Ramprakash hailed Gil’s stamina as well skill and hunger to accumulate runs. “We have to pay testament to his stamina, his skill and his hunger – not just for runs, but to set an example as the new captain of a young team. Captaincy can affect a player’s form detrimentally, but it seems to have focused him and his three highest Test scores have been made in the past three weeks,” Ramprakash added.
The former England batsman also recounted his memories of Steve Smith’s batting in the 2017-2018 Ashes series. Smith had scored a total of 687 runs in the series including one double hundred and two unbeaten centuries and Ramprakash believes England bowling attack need to find fresh ways to challenge Gill. “I remember Smith’s performances on the Ashes tour I went on as batting coach in 2017-18, when he scored two unbeaten centuries and a double century, ending the series with an average of 137.40. At times it felt like we just could not get him out, it was soul-destroying. He always seemed to have an answer. After a while it really does get to you and we had two very experienced frontline bowlers in Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad. Gill is used to the cast of bowlers England used in the first two matches, he knows their plans, their trajectories, their variations, their pace. If fatigue was not already going to force Ben Stokes to change his bowling group, the need to find fresh ways to challenge the India captain would have done it anyway,” wrote Ramprakash, who was batting coach for England in the 2017-2018 Ashes series.
