Hail the Prince: Shubman Gill's India captaincy a prophecy fulfilled but Test doubts remain
Shubman Gill was a pretty laid-back character when he played for Glamorgan three summers ago. So laid back, in fact, that early on during his time there he parked the brand new Volvo the club had arranged for him and apparently left the keys in the ignition. Sure enough, after training, he returned to find it had been pinched.
Cue panic in the finance department at Sophia Gardens, calls to the insurers and the like. But at least his new teammates had material for some lighthearted mickey-taking. Gill, just turned 23 but already an India star on the rise, had arrived for three September rounds of the County Championship in 2022. Saying hello with 92 on debut in Cardiff, and goodbye with 119 at Hove, it sounds like he fitted in well.
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'When he first turned up to nets, you knew he was just a class above everyone else,' Sam Northeast, the club's middle-order veteran, tells the Guardian. 'I don't want to put down other overseas players I've played with over the years but he was on a different level to a lot of them. It was just the amount of time he had, the shots he possessed, and the ability to place the ball where he wanted. We knew he was a star in the making.
'As a person, he was extremely relaxed, and I think you probably have to be that way to deal with the scrutiny which comes with playing for India. He was a little bit in the clouds, actually. A little bit 'are you here? Are you with us?' The closest I've seen to that is probably captaining Kagiso Rabada at Kent, who was very similar. Just no stress.'
Like a lot of India players who come over to play county cricket, Gill enjoyed the relative anonymity of life in Cardiff; the ability to walk down the street without being swamped by requests for selfies. And though a transactional stint on one level – the club were chasing promotion to Division One, Gill his own improvement against the red Dukes ball – he has stayed in contact with a number of teammates since.
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'It was striking how good he was and very knowledgeable,' says Mark Wallace, director of cricket at Glamorgan. 'They call them cricket badgers these days. He knew the records of the players he was up against, the coaches too. Alan Wilkins, who is now our president, alerted us to his possible availability and then it was a case of contacting his agent, realising it wouldn't cost a king's ransom, and getting it sorted.'
Glamorgan didn't quite get up that season and remain in Division Two but Gill's world has changed exponentially of late. After Rohit Sharma retired from Test cricket last month, and Jasprit Bumrah told the Board of Control for Cricket in India his workload management would make captaincy too messy, the head coach, Gautam Gambhir, turned to Gill to lead. Five Tests in England, where India have not won a series since 2007, make for a serious baptism.
The promotion was not a surprise in one sense, rather a long-held prophecy fulfilled. Born in Fazilka, Punjab, near the border with Pakistan, before moving to Mohali aged eight to be closer to the best facilities, the nickname Prince has followed him round to the point of sometimes appearing on his bat stickers. An Under-19s World Cup winner in 2018, schooled in the Indian Premier League and boasting the second-highest one-day international average in history (59.04), it always felt a case of when, not if, he would lead his country.
Aged 25 and set to become India's fifth-youngest Test captain, the timing of Gill's appointment is still intriguing though. Gill is silky on the eye, back foot dominant and wonderfully correct; as the folks at Glamorgan attest, it all looks so good. And in terms of leadership, the CV includes two seasons at Gujarat Titans in the IPL – runners-up in 2025 – five T20is and an India A tour. By modern standards it is not a total Hail Mary.
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But averaging 35 from 32 Tests, and with four of his five centuries coming in India – and the other in Bangladesh – the back catalogue of batting against the red ball still has plenty of gaps. England is one, with an average of 14 from two World Test Championship finals and a single appearance against the Bazballers in 2022. After a run of established greats being elevated to the captaincy, India have chosen a player who is still figuring things out.
Like a number of Test careers, there have been sliding-doors moments. Last year, say, when England went 1-0 up in Hyderabad, a second-innings duck dropped Gill's Test average fall below 30 for the first time. According to the Indian Express, Rahul Dravid, then head coach, he was on the brink of sending his No 3 back to domestic cricket, only for a second-innings 104 in Vizag – in a 106-run victory – to prompt a rethink.
By the end of a series that India won 4-1, Gill had banked another century in Dharamshala, his confidence restored to the point of telling Jimmy Anderson to retire during some on-field verbals. While Anderson soon got his revenge for Test wicket No 699, that flare-up supported a prediction from Jos Buttler, an IPL teammate this year, that Gill will blend Sharma's serenity with moments of aggression like Kohli.
It will not be straightforward. India go into Friday's first Test off the back of six defeats and one win from their past eight outings and, given those high-profile retirements, the team is now in transition. Handed the keys much earlier than many expected and needing to lead with the bat, Gill will have precious little time to get up to speed.
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New York Times
2 hours ago
- New York Times
India's Next Gen: Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal show their time is now
To lose one legend before a huge Test series could be put down to misfortune, but losing two looked anything but careless for India at Headingley where two of the younger faces of their batting lineup stepped comfortably into the shoes of giants. It is difficult to exaggerate the scale of the setback to India after the decisions of both Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, two of their biggest superstars, to announce their retirements from Test cricket ahead of this marquee five-match series against England. Advertisement That left them with a highly talented but inexperienced — and potentially even vulnerable — looking batting line up which was asked immediately to face the music on the first day of the first Test in Leeds after Ben Stokes won the toss and put India in to bat. Under most scrutiny was a new captain in Shubman Gill who stepped into one of the most high pressured roles in sport. Gill was not even first choice to succeed Sharma, with Jasprit Bumrah having insisted he would not be fit enough to lead India in five Test matches over seven weeks. Yet if Gill was feeling the strain on his first day in high office then it did not show. Having come in after lunch, he oozed class and skill. The captain was utterly unruffled as he eased his way to an unbeaten 127 and, together with fellow century-maker Yashasvi Jaiswal, batted his side into a position of considerable strength at 359 for three at the close on day one. Gill and Jaiswal are hardly rookies but, at 25 and 23, they represent the future of India's Test batting as well as the present. They might have been burdened with the weight of Indian expectations on their shoulders at Headingley. They carried them effortlessly. The new captain had cut a calm and relaxed figure at his pre-match press conference. A measure of the job ahead of him was summed up when the opening questioner asked Gill about his 'coronation moment' and whether he had grasped the 'enormity' of the responsibility being thrust upon him. He just smiled and batted the question away as easily as he would an under-par England bowling line-up on Friday, where he pulled and drove away at will in his distinctive style in progressing to a sixth hundred — and third against England — in his 33rd Test. Talk of a coronation was a further reminder of the absence here of 'King' Kohli, but the man nicknamed 'Prince' — it is even stamped on his bat — took on the role at No 4 vacated by one of the biggest figures in Indian cricket history for the first time. He made it his own. Advertisement 'There used to be a king out there — today there's a prince,' said former India wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik on commentary with Sky Sports. The only thing not regal about Gill here was his decision to wear black socks while batting, a fashion faux pas in Test cricket if ever there was one. Not that he will have cared. Gill has a much better record in home conditions than outside the subcontinent — he averaged just 14.66 in England before this Test — but, here, the hosts could do nothing to stop him. They tried different ploys, including a relentless barrage of early in-swingers at the start of his innings given the data suggested that is where he is at his weakest in these conditions. All to no avail. Only when Gill almost ran himself out on just one did he look uncomfortable, but Ollie Pope's throw from midwicket not only failed to hit the stumps but raced away to the boundary for overthrows and one of two 'fives' in the day. To again almost quote Oscar Wilde, to concede one five when trying to run out the India captain may be considered misfortune. But to concede a second, when Harry Brook parried the ball onto a fielding helmet placed behind wicketkeeper Jamie Smith to penalise England and hand India five 'extras', was certainly carelessness. There was one man in the England dressing room who would have been unsurprised at the ease with which Gill took on the Indian captaincy. In 2020, England coach Brendon McCullum — then in charge of Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League, cricket's biggest and most glitzy franchise competition — promoted a young Gill to his leadership group. Gill had yet to play a Test. 'Even though he is young I am a big believer in it's not necessarily true just playing for a long time makes you a good leader,' explained McCullum at the time. 'It's about exhibiting the behaviours of a leader. To us, Shubman is one of those guys.' Advertisement That Kolkata leadership group also included Eoin Morgan, the former England white-ball captain and architect of the attacking style that took them to World Cup success in 2019, an approach since replicated by McCullum and Stokes in Test cricket. Morgan had no doubts India had chosen the right man to lead the post-Kohli and Sharma era. 'He's a natural leader,' Morgan told Sky Sports on Gill's appointment last month. 'He takes on responsibility within a group, he doesn't mind questioning methodology within the camp, but ultimately the collective goal is what's most important to him.' What would definitely not have surprised England was the performance of Jaiswal. They saw plenty of the dynamic left-hander last year when losing 4-1 in India, the biggest setback endured by Bazball since Stokes and McCullum took up the reins in 2022. So dominant was Jaiswal then that he scored a monumental 712 runs in the five-match series, the most ever scored by an Indian against England, and smashed double centuries in successive Tests at Visakhapatnam and Rajkot. To be in India watching that series was to witness a boy who, at 12, left his home in Uttar Pradesh for Mumbai to try to make his name in the sport — he slept in tents on the maidans that have spawned so many cricketing talents and sold pani puri, a deep-fried street food, to earn pocket money — becoming the new poster boy of Indian cricket. Not least when he hit Jimmy Anderson, the most prolific fast bowler in Test history, for three successive sixes during the second of those double hundreds in Rajkot; the first flicked over fine leg, the second flying over extra cover and the third disappearing back over Anderson's head. There was a little less of Jaiswal's audacity in Leeds, but there was plenty of class as he scored a disproportionate 88 per cent of his 101 on the off-side, completing a century in his first Test in England just as he had on debut and in his first Test in Australia. 'I love scoring every hundred but this one was special,' said Jaiswal afterwards. 'We were just trying to keep it simple and play within an area. If there is a loose ball I always believe you need to go for it. I really enjoyed it.' It left plenty questioning Stokes' decision to bowl on a sunny day when presented with a flat pitch that looked made for batting. But there was data method behind his apparent madness. The previous six Tests at this famous ground have been won by the side bowling first while Stokes famously prefers to chase in Tests, with four of England's victories in the opening Bazball summer of 2022 coming from reaching large fourth-innings targets. Advertisement Since 2015 on a ground once known to suit seam bowling, batting has become easier and easier, an average of 26.81 per wicket on the first day swelling to 40.06 on day five. So it would be unwise to write off England just yet. But, for now, it is all about India and the prince who has become India's new king. Gill completed his hundred with a glorious drive for four off Josh Tongue and screamed almost in relief before embracing his vice-captain, Rishabh Pant. There was a bow, too, as the applause rained down. The king is dead. Long live the king. Click here to follow cricket on The Athletic and see more stories like this.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
India dominate day one as Yashavi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill hit centuries
England gifted India the initiative on day one of the Rothesay Test series at Headingley, where Yashavi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill rose to the occasion with a pair of fine centuries. Ben Stokes sent the tourists in after winning the toss, perhaps hoping to unsettle a batting lineup missing the star power of the recently retired Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, but the gambit merely handed over first use of serene batting conditions. Advertisement Jaiswal led from the front with 101 on his first appearance on English soil, while Gill finished unbeaten on 127 in his maiden knock as Test captain. Kohli and Sharma's golden legacies are sure to linger, but India's future already looks in safe hands. Yashasvi Jaiswal celebrates his century (Danny Lawson/PA) By stumps England were staring at a score of 359 for three, weighed down by a long, draining day in sticky summer heat and a difficult road ahead. Stokes was the pick of the bowlers with two for 43 but Chris Woakes, Brydon Carse and Josh Tongue struggled to impose themselves in unhelpful conditions. The story was set in motion at 10.30am, Gill calling wrong at the toss and Stokes opting to field. There was a hint of swing from the new ball, shared by the returning Woakes and Carse on home debut, but it quickly became apparent that there were no terrors in the pitch. Advertisement KL Rahul (42) offered a calm head at the top of the order and Jaiswal, well known to England after helping himself to a monstrous series tally of 712 runs when the sides last met in India, shackled his more explosive instincts as he bedded in. Carse hit him with a rib-tickler in the initial burst but when it came to clear chances, England were coming up empty-handed, squandering a review on Jaiswal when they sent Tongue's ambitious lbw appeal upstairs. India were seven minutes away from a wicketless session when Rahul threw his hands at a wide one from Carse to feed Joe Root at slip. That breakthrough brought the Yorkshire crowd alive and their celebrations had barely dipped when they enjoyed a second. Sai Sudharsan's first Test innings brought a four-ball duck, flicking Stokes down leg and into Jamie Smith's gloves just seconds after flirting with an identical dismissal. Advertisement If that double strike smoothed some of the rough edges from England's slow start, the afternoon's play exposed them again. Ollie Pope missed the chance to run out out Gill for just one, sweetening the deal with four overthrows, and Harry Brook parried a low edge into the wicketkeeper's helmet to give up five penalty runs. Jaiswal's first half-century occupied 96 balls and he glided through the gears to get his next 50 in just 48, despite several delays for cramp in his hand. Twice he took three boundaries in an over, first taking aim at the lethargic Woakes and later breezing through the nineties at Carse's expense. Shoaib Bashir brought some control in his 21 overs but there was not enough spin on offer to turn that into real pressure. Ben Stokes' brilliant dismissal of Yashasvi Jaiswal was a brief moment of respite for England (Danny Lawson/PA) It took a burst of inspiration from Stokes to stop the rot, charging in from round the wicket and toppling Jaiswal's off stump having forced one past the outside edge. Advertisement By then Gill had progressed to 63 and had set his sights on a captain's century. He got there with his 14th boundary, a peach of a cover drive off Tongue. It was the sixth hundred of his career but his first outside Asia. The unpredictable Rishabh Pant poured on further pain with 65 not out. Starting his innings by charging Stokes for four down the ground, he settled into an extended spell of defence before springing into life with some big hits in the closing stages. Thumbing his nose at convention, Pant danced down again in the final over of the day to flog Woakes over deep square-leg for six.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
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India's Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal make tons to leave England toiling in first Test
India slightly snuck into the country four weeks ago, dribs and drabs getting an 'A' tour underway before the bulk of the first-teamers landed and started playing intra-squad cricket. The delayed finish to the Indian Premier League commanded eyeballs initially, then the World Test Championship final last week. All told, it was a soft launch. Related: England v India: first men's cricket Test, day one – live Advertisement But on the opening day of the summer's marquee series, the tourists announced themselves with a flex of their muscles. Centuries from Yashasvi Jaiswal, 101, and Shubman Gill, 127 not out, had driven England to distraction and taken India to 359 for three. Gill's first outing as captain had proved an unqualified success and no one was talking about the absences of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli. A chastening start for Ben Stokes and his men, therefore, albeit not unfamiliar territory as regards their initial tormentor. Jaiswal notched up 712 runs against them in India last year – including two double hundreds – and his image was practically burned on to their collective retina by the end. Might his first Test match encounter with the Dukes ball see a change of fortune? The answer, it transpired, was no. But then Jaiswal is a player who likes to make a strong first impression, having compiled a century on debut in the Caribbean, one in his first Test in Australia, and now one on arrival in England. It was some knock, too – the first by an Asian opener at Headingley, no less – as he left diligently, cut ferociously and drove through the covers with panache. Indeed, until Stokes castled him after tea with an inswinger that nipped away, Jaiswal's chief concern was bouts of cramp in his forearms as he cruised into the 90s. Even then, despite a couple of delays with the physio and obvious pain, he moved to 99 with a flurry of fours off Brydon Carse before a pinched single brought up Test century No 5. Advertisement While Jaiswal moved through the gears – 96 balls for his half-century, only 48 more to double it – Gill started fast and then bedded in. And at 5.44pm, as he caressed Josh Tongue through the covers for four, he became the first Indian since Virat Kohli 11 years ago to make a century in his first innings as captain. Gill's celebration, a punch of the air and guttural roar, was in stark contrast to the serenity that got him there. At the other end was his vice-captain, Rishabh Pant, who finished unbeaten on 65. The responsibility of being Gill's new No 2 had dampened none of the mischief, either, Pant dancing down the pitch to Stokes second ball and clobbering him back over his head for four. In the final over, when thoughts might have turned to safety, he summed up the day as a whole by swatting Chris Woakes for six with a jaw-dropping swivel pull. This being Headingley, so often a scene of the absurd and a ground where the past six Tests have been won by the side bowling first, England will refuse to believe they are snookered. By the same token, sticking a team in under clear skies and seeing them lose only three wickets across three sessions was clearly suboptimal. Both captains wanted to bowl first, however, and the modern way – certainly the Stokes and Brendon McCullum way – is not always to do so with an eye on skittling a side cheaply. Against New Zealand at Trent Bridge three years ago, for example, Stokes inserted, saw the tourists rack up 553, and England won by five wickets. India scored 418 at Edgbaston that same summer after being asked to bat first and lost by seven. Advertisement Of greater concern was the fact that Stokes was the best of the quicks on show, not simply his figures of two for 43 from 13 overs but by way of obvious threat. Carse flickered at times, even if his solitary removal of KL Rahul before lunch came via a lazy waft, but Tongue was largely scattergun and Woakes found precious little movement. If there was one relative success among the frontliners it was probably Shoaib Bashir sending down 21 overs with little assistance from the surface and holding his own. With an economy of 3.1 under the overall run-rate of 4.2, the off-spinner had performed a day one role some thought beyond him. Drift was his friend, even if no chances materialised. It had not taken long for the total at stumps to look possible, India dominating the early exchanges and getting to within touching distance of lunch when Rahul's error on 42 opened up an end. The removal of Sai Sudharsan almost immediately, strangled down leg off Stokes for a four-ball duck on debut, might have appeared a bit fortunate when India walked off at 92 for two but there was clearly a plan behind it. This was pretty much the only one that came off for England, however, Jaiswal and Gill putting on 129 for the third wicket in an afternoon of toil for the bowlers. Had Carse not overstepped, Jaiswal would have been lbw 43 when a yorker hit boot and then bat. And had Ollie Pope hit the stumps with a shy from midwicket, Gill would have been run out for one. Ifs and buts count for little, however, and India have unquestionably arrived.
