The more you watch Shubman Gill bat, the more you are forced into bringing out the thesaurus to counter repeat adjectives. The more you are induced into the superlatives. With every innings, the classy right-hander keeps raising the bar, only to push it a notch higher with the subsequent knock.
There is touch, there is class, there is finesse, there is precision, there is power and then there is Gill combining them all together to put on a T20 masterclass. The “Crown Prince” is not ready to wait for the throne. Knock after knock, the heir apparent is staging a mutiny and charting his own way to supremacy.
GT vs MI IPL 2023 Qualifier 2 Highlights
Not many moons ago, at this very venue, Gill scored his maiden Test hundred on Indian soil in the Border Gavaskar Trophy. Between that 235-ball 128 to now, every shot off his blade makes you go – ‘How?’ How is he making batting look ridiculously easy? How does he jump gears without a creak? How does he effortlessly dominate bowlers? And most importantly, how does he look so good while doing all that?
Strong back-foot play coupled with the art of picking length early puts him a step ahead of the new-ball bowlers and then the strong base. Additionally, his ability to hold shape while clearing the ropes, makes Gill a nightmare for bowlers in the middle phase of the game. To add to frustration of the opposition, the right-hander makes no major change in either half of his innings and it’s just the pinch of power to timing which helps him dish out a delicious recipe.
‘Dada’ player
Difference between a good, great and ‘dada’ (domineering) player is not how many runs they score, but the bowlers they keep in the firing line. On Friday, Gill first chose Mumbai Indians’ most successful bowler this season, Piyush Chawla, and launched him for two straight sixes and didn’t allow the spinner a chance to complete his quota overs.
Next up was Akash Madwal – Mumbai’s most successful bowler in the Eliminator vs Chennai Super Kings and the seamer who dismissed Gill last time the two sides met at Wankhede.
Madhwal was pulled with disdain, flicked with class and outsmarted with authority. Inexperience on the bowler’s part was evident when he tried to bounce Gill out and instead served easy pickings to the 23-year-old.
Since 2018, his first IPL season, Gill had gone as high as 12 sixes in an edition – he averaged 9.4 sixes a season. On Friday, Gill hit 10 sixes in just one night and acted as a perfect muse for the photographers every time he launched them into the stands.
In a single playoff innings, these are the most number of sixes hit by a batter and Gill overtook his teammate Wriddhiman Saha, who had hit eight in the 2014 final vs KKR. Surpassing another milestone from the same edition, the right-hander’s 129 is now the highest individual score in IPL Playoffs. Virender Sehwag sat on top for nine years for his 122 run blitzkrieg vs CSK in Mumbai.
Redefining anchors
In a recent interview with JioCinema, MI captain Rohit Sharma spoke about the role of anchors and why there is no space for one in the T20 format.
“As I see it, there is no role for an anchor now. It is just how T20 cricket is played these days, unless you are 20 for 3 or 4, which is not going to happen every day,” Rohit had said.
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Gill, however, showed in Qualifier 2 that there is still room for an anchor but the traditional definition of the anchor needs to change in the shortest format, especially with the Impact Player rule. There is a big difference when a 32-ball 50 becomes a 49-ball 100 (Gill’s two fifties today) and benefits the side way more than a 60-ball 100, which, in search of mini-acceleration towards the end, results in a late collapse and becomes the difference between say a 200 or 220.
This wasn’t the case at the Narendra Modi Stadium tonight as Gill, after a watchful start and early life, courtesy Tim David’s drop when he was batting on 30, never released the foot off the accelerator and was aided by a listless bowling effort where MI bowlers mindlessly kept banging them short.
The right-hander was looking to bat long but remained strong in his intent to keep the scoring rate up. That’s how much batting has changed in this format and this is where an all-round game against both spin and seam keeps the batter in a dominating position. Unlike ODIs, there is no room for quiet overs in T20s and those can well affect the direction in which the game is headed.
Gill’s 129 will be talked about in years to come but again, the zone he is in right now, you only expect him to raise the bar to a level only he can breach again.
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