IPL 2025: Gill Used His Brains A Lot More Than Other Guys At U16 Level, Says Kapoor

IPL 2025: Gill used his brains a lot more than other guys at U16 level, says Kapoor (Image Source: IANS)

Arun Jaitley Stadium: Since the time Rohit Sharma quit Test cricket earlier this month, the chatter has been constantly focused on who will succeed him as the next Test skipper. Though names of Jasprit Bumrah and KL Rahul emerge quickly in the mind, Shubman Gill is believed to be front-runner in the race to be India’s next Test captain.

In the last 12 months, Gill’s tryst with leadership roles has been immense – he was made Gujarat Titans’ skipper once Hardik Pandya moved back to Mumbai Indians. Though GT failed to enter knockouts, the Indian team saw a spark in Gill’s leadership skills – making him the skipper on T20I tour of Zimbabwe last year and elevating him to be the ODI vice-captain.

After Gill slammed 93 not out and shared an unbroken 205-run stand with B Sai Sudharsan to help GT thrash Delhi Capitals by ten wickets at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, assistant coach Aashish Kapoor said the right-handed batter is someone who always used his brain more than his peers, based on his observations of him at the U16 level.

“If you see Shubman as a batsman and a cricketer also, I think he is a good thinker of his own batting. I have seen him from under 16. Actually in NCA, I have done two camps with him. So from the under 16 age group, I have seen that he used to use brains a lot more than a lot of other guys at his age.”

“That is one quality that is needed to be a captain. Where you can use your brains for yourself and for 10 other people. How are you going to win matches? We have seen this and the moment we got an opportunity, when Hardik left. We could have always gone with someone else senior as a captain. But we took a chance with him,” said Kapoor in the post-match press conference.

IPL 2024 was Gill’s first major brush with a leadership role – something which became a bit daunting due to Pandya’s exit and Mohammed Shami being out due to achilles tendon injury. Couple with his own lacklustre form, it didn’t make for a great start for Gill the GT leader.

But in IPL 2025, with gaps filled from the auction, one can sense that Gill has grown into a composed and assured leader. During the game on Sunday, Gill was proactive in changing his fields, sticking to the bowling plans and despite making a debatable decision of handing the 16th over to R Sai Kishore, which yielded 15 runs, he gave the sense of a captain in control of himself and the proceedings.

“It was the last year that Hardik left and Shami was injured, and he was out of form. So all those things put together, but we could still see that he was trying hard as a captain. You can see the results this year. I mean, the captaincy has been the same, but he is in better form this year, which is helping himself and the team.”

“So that is one very important thing in IPL that your players should be your top players, and there should be less injuries in your team. This is one thing, because it is such a long format. You get one or two guys, important guys injured, and your whole team can take a back seat. So that way we are lucky this year,” added Kapoor, the former India player who later served as head of the junior men’s selection committee.

There’s a school of thought in the Indian cricketing ecosystem that Gill can take over the Test captaincy each time Bumrah doesn't play due to workload management, citing him being young and not having any substantial contribution in overseas Tests.

Another thought says that India should stick with Gill as the captain from get go and invest in him as a long-term Test captain. Kapoor further stressed on the fact that Gill has just started as a captain in his cricketing career and one can’t predict how he will fare as a red-ball skipper right now on seeing white-ball results.

“We will have to see. I am not an astrologer. Here, we are seeing T20 cricket. When (MS) Dhoni was made captain for the World Cup for the first time, he was not captain anywhere. So nobody knew, 10 years or 12 years down the line, he is going to be one of the world's best captains.”

Another thought says that India should stick with Gill as the captain from get go and invest in him as a long-term Test captain. Kapoor further stressed on the fact that Gill has just started as a captain in his cricketing career and one can’t predict how he will fare as a red-ball skipper right now on seeing white-ball results.

Article Source: IANS