Tipped for greatness after playing a starring role in India’s U-19 World Cup title win in 2018, Shubman Gill, in the past year or so, has shown a glimpse of why he’s so highly rated. Within the first three months of 2023, Gill has scored an ODI double-century, peeled off a maiden T20I century, struck a Test century against Australia (overall his second in the format) while firmly cementing his place in the Indian team.
Gill is also seen as a quality captaincy option and his IPL franchise Gujrat Titans do consider him for leadership role in the future. As of now, allrounder Hardik Pandya will continue to lead the franchise having made a sparkling captaincy debut last season as he guided them to title win.
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GT director of cricket Vikram Solanki says Gill is already ‘a leader in his own right’ and the team management is quite impressed with his work ethic.
“Shubman is a leader in his own right for the simple fact that he takes on a lot of responsibility. In my mind, it is not important that you play with an asterisk next to a player’s name,” Solanki told reporters during a virtual media interaction on Thursday.
Solanki though clarified that no formal decision on Gill’s captaincy has been made so far. “Shubman adapted the leadership role last year, by his conduct, by the way he goes about, with his professional attitude towards the game Do I think that Shubman will be a leader in the future? Yes absolutely, but no decision has been made about that as yet. He has leadership qualities and is very mature who has an abundant amount of talent,” he said.
“He has a very smart cricketing brain and we will continue to have conversations with Shubman and invite his opinion on every decision we make,” Solanki added.
The upcoming IPL season will see a new rule being implemented.
Each captain will nominate eleven players plus a maximum of five substitute fielders in writing to the IPL Match Referee after the toss. A team will be allowed to make one change in their playing XI midway through the game within a stipulated time-frame.
“We will just have to wait and see. It is going to be an interesting change to the dynamics, it might bring (forth) some tactical decisions to be made. But essentially the way we are looking at it at the moment is that you can name your eleven or a bigger squad of 15 after the toss and that has a different bearing on it,” Solanki said.
“Initially we are starting to have discussions around it but it will bring an interesting dynamic to the IPL this year. It will be interesting to see how different teams adapt to the rule,” he added.
There has been a lot of talk around managing the workload of Indian players, especially those who are Test and ODI regulars. The BCCI will be keeping a keen eye on India pacers including GT’s Mohammed Shami.
“He (Shami) was quite outstanding for us last year. You just have to wait and see what the situation is, we have to be respectful of the fact that fast bowling is a very demanding job,” Solanki said.
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“He is coming off a lot of cricket, we got to make sure we do the best for Mohammad Shami so that he can, in turn, do the best for Gujarat Titans. He will be one of those players we will monitor carefully with every preparation, every resource so that he is in best possible place for every game,” he added.
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