Boria Majumdar
Sport is defined by an obsession with excellence. To push the bar each time you take the field. And each time you fail, you go back to the drawing board and come back better and stronger. That’s what the quest for perfection is all about. Let me also say this – no one is perfect. No day is ever perfect, and the quest is always to be perfect on an imperfect day.
Shubman Gill is the best example of this. He didn’t score a hundred in the first Test of this series. He was determined to go big in New Delhi. And yes, Test hundreds are Test hundreds. You don’t pick your opposition, and much as the trollers hate him, he is doing a fantastic job as captain and batter. Five hundreds in seven Test matches stand as testimony, and so far, Gill hasn’t put a foot wrong as red-ball skipper.
I had seen this quest for excellence in Dubai as well. India had an optional training session ahead of the Pakistan game, and three players turned up for practice – Gill, Abhishek Sharma and Varun Chakaravarty. And it was Gill and Abhishek who floored Pakistan the next day. Gill, who had not scored against Oman, was trying to perfect the cut and the pull. Thereafter, he unleashed his entire array of strokes and played some audacious shots. By the end of the training session, he was match-ready. The confidence was back, and mentally he must have felt better. For him, it was about preparing the best he could, and that’s all that matters in the end.
With Gill, I have seen this obsessive quest for excellence in the last three months. He comes to training on time, and thereafter goes about his routine with a kind of stoic monotony that you don’t see in many. He does his fielding drills and then bats for long periods. And once that batting stint is done, you will see him do special catching drills with fielding coach T Dilip, before short sprints to conclude the session. It is this training that has made Gill India’s next big cricket star. The commitment to the cause and the self-discipline, day in and day out.
The truth is that excellence isn’t achieved on match days. Rather, it is all about doing the mundane and the boring day after day. With no one watching, turning up for practice and never resorting to a short cut. The effort away from the media glare is what shapes a sportsperson, and Gill has been doing that to perfection.
Make no mistake, Shubman Gill is here to stay. Having seen him up close in the last few months, I can say with certainty that he has a very stable head on his shoulders and knows what his job is. As India’s red-ball captain, he knows there will be intense media scrutiny. And yet, he is unfazed. For him, the quest for excellence is far more significant than anything else, and that’s where his focus is at the moment. With time, Gill will get even better and I would not be surprised if he elevates himself as a leader in the next few years.
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