With every big knock, Shubman Gill keeps setting the stage of fire, inevitably leading to his comparisons with Virat Kohli and Sachin Tendulkar.
It’s just surreal how Indian cricket does it. When the legendary Sunil Gavaskar retired, everyone wondered: ‘Who next?’ And the very next year, a 16-year-old Sachin Tendulkar debuted and went on to become arguably the world’s greatest batter. 25 years later, when the time came for the great Tendulkar to step away, his void was filled by Virat Kohli as he stamped himself as one of the greatest and most complete modern-day batter. In the battle of the Fab 4, Kohli stood out as he dominated all three formats averaging over 50 in each and taking world cricket by storm. Today, as Kohli embraces the ‘grey’, Team India already has his successor ready in Shubman Gill. Just 23 years old, Gill is being touted as the next big thing in Indian cricket, and his red-hot form simply more than justifies it. [Follow | IPL 2023: CSK vs GT LIVE score updates]
With every big knock, Gill keeps setting the stage of fire, inevitably leading to his comparisons with Kohli and Tendulkar. For the longest time, the Virat vs Sachin discussions used to dominate, but heading forward, going by his meteoric rise, the Gill vs Kohli debates aren’t too far, with the likes of Virender Sehwag, AB de Villiers, Kapil Dev and many more seeing shades of greatness in the youngster. Now, reacting to the comparisons is Gill himself, who for the first time, opened up on being talked about in the same sentence as Tendulkar and Kohli.
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“See it’s great when people see it but I don’t really see that way because the generation that all of these people Sachin sir, Virat bhai and Rohit Sharma have inspired is beyond. There may not been a Sachin Tendulkar had we not won the 1983 World Cup… had we not won the 2011 world cup would I be as much inspired, maybe or maybe not. So, these kinds of legacies, things kind of things are immortal. you can’t really define their legacies,” Gill told ANI.
Imperious IPL 2023
Gill has already set 2023 on fire scoring 624 runs from just 9 ODIs, including two centuries and a double hundred, to go with another hundred in T20Is. Heading into the IPL, Gill was expected to have a big season, but the manner in which he has responded has simply made jaws drop. With 851 runs and three centuries, Gill sits pretty atop the Orange Cap rankings and has a real chance of breaking Kohli’s tally of 963 runs – the most by any player in a single edition of the IPL.
Twice in three innings did Gill’s hundreds knock out two of the top IPL teams in Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians. Against RCB, Gill’s second straight IPL century overshadowed Kohli’s as GT chased down 198. Later, against MI in the Eliminator, Gill notched up arguably his most destructive century – 129 off 60 balls as Gujarat hammered the five-time champions by 62 runs to secure their place in the final against Chennai Super Kings. Eyeing another milestone, Gill has a real shot at cementing himself as an IPL great. He could become only the second ever Indian batter to breach the 900-run mark hoping to give his team, a second consecutive IPL title.