Former India Captain and T20 World Cup-winning coach Rahul Dravid has praised Shubman Gill for his immense talent. Talking to Ravichandran Ashwin on his YouTube channel, Dravid said that he heard Gill’s name from many people before he even met the young batter.
“Shubman Gill was the obvious one, along with Prithvi Shaw. Many people discovered Shubman Gill. Because everywhere I went, all I heard was Shubman Gill, whoa, this player Shubman Gill,” Dravid said. “And it’s true, when you come through this Indian system, where you are a special player like Vaibhav or Mhatre, they have been through so many coaches, scouts. Before I actually saw Shubman Gill, about six people had told me there’s this kid called Shubman Gill, and that he’s a very good player and things like that.”
Under Gill’s Captaincy, Indian Test team made a great comeback in the recently concluded Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy and levelled the series 2-2. The 25-year-old emerged as the best batter of the series with 754 runs from five matches. He was recently announced the vice-captain of the Indian team for the upcoming Asia Cup.
Dravid, who had the chance to work with Rishabh Pant, Gill and others in their younger days when he was the coach of the India under-19 team, also named some of the other players whom he thought could excel in their future.
“I can’t say one. That would be very unfair. I think when I saw Rishabh for the first time, I knew this guy was something different,” Dravid said. “Looking back at the 2016 batch, I thought even someone like Khaleel Ahmed… still finding his way in, still not able to crack it… but when you saw him in Under-19, you thought ‘wow, this kid has some ability for a young fast bowler’. Riyan [Parag] was in there too. When I first saw Sanju Samson at 18 years old, he looked a million bucks.”
Pant is the current vice-captain of India in Test matches, and he had a brilliant series in England, where he scored 479 runs in four matches.
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