Boria Majumdar at Edgbaston
He was on his way back to India and, I must say, was missing the action. “I’d have loved to stay on for Lord’s but as you know, I need to be back in Kolkata for some pressing work,” said Sourav Ganguly as we caught up on a video call. Ganguly had said ahead of the series that he saw huge potential in Shubman Gill and that India’s new No. 4 had it in him to take over from the great Virat Kohli. And now that he had been vindicated, he was mighty pleased.
“Shubman is batting like a dream,” said Ganguly. “See my tweet and you will know. In my three decades of playing and watching cricket in the UK, this is one of the best exhibitions of batting that I have seen. He is simply flawless. There are no chinks in his armour and the English bowlers don’t look like getting him out. See the way he is batting and you will know what I am saying. Gill isn’t making a single mistake. He was always pleasing to the eye. And now he is showing the hunger and the temperament. If you see him now, you will be left wondering how can he have an average of less than 50 in Test cricket.”
You ask him to elaborate and he starts again. “The best thing about Shubman in this series is the determination to go big,” said Ganguly. “If you see, in every innings, he has gone big. A hundred isn’t really enough. He wants to get the double-hundred and that’s something fantastic to see.”
As we moved on to the win, Ganguly was ecstatic. “When you asked me in the morning, I said to you that we don’t need that many overs,” he said. “In fact, when you first spoke to me and said to me that the game was starting at 12:40pm local time, I said to you right then that India would not need that much time and that 80 overs was more than enough. I don’t think this English batting is good enough without Joe Root to survive the last day of the Test match.”
And what about Akash Deep, I asked Ganguly. He is a product of the CAB’s Vision 2020 and Ganguly was the brain behind it. “Very Shami, isn’t he,” said Ganguly, all praise. “He was just fantastic, Akash Deep. The way he used the crease, the way he ran in and the amount of swing he got was brilliant. He reminded me of Mohammed Shami at his very best. The delivery to Joe Root, for example, would have got any batter in the world out.
“And now, he has the confidence. With Bumrah back at Lord’s, India has the attack to take twenty wickets consistently. Use Bumrah as a wicket-taker, something I had said to you ahead of the series. You have enough in that bowling unit to make sure that he isn’t overused. This series has been very nicely set up. In fact, India should have won in Leeds as well. After being 430-3, it should have been India’s game.”
Just as I was about to disconnect, he added, “This series could see the making of Shubman Gill as skipper.” Coming from one of the best, those were huge words of praise.
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