Boria Majumdar at Edgbaston
Someone in the press box reminded me this morning that Shubman Gill had an average of 35 ahead of the series. “Is it true?”, the journalist asked. Was he being cheeky? The answer is that I don’t know.
When you think of it, you are indeed surprised. From what we have seen here, the class, hunger, penchant for runs, you tend to think that this is surely someone averaging over 50 in Test cricket.
Two shots defined Gill as a batter in this innings. Josh Tongue, post-lunch, tried the short-ball ploy. In no time, India’s captain was in top gear. Out came the pull and hook, and there was a stamp of quality in each shot played. Pleasing to the eye, Gill’s mastery was yet again in evidence when the English bowlers pitched it up. Perfect foot movement, in position to play the shot, and then a gentle caress. The ball streaked across the outfield like lightening for another boundary. It was routine, and you had to see it to believe it.
CLR James, in the initial pages of Beyond the Boundary, refers to cricket as art. He talks about Michaelangelo and makes the point beautifully. You watch Gill bat and you think he is painting his own canvas. The brushstrokes have a rhythm and his shots are poetry. Even the forward defensive is copybook. Add the determination and the hunger, and you know you are seeing something special unfold.
Gill has already scored over 500 runs in the series and we’re just two Tests in. Could he score 1000 runs in a five-Test series? Could that really happen? If someone had said that to me at the start of it all, I’d have laughed. But having watched him bat in this Test match, I have to say it is possible. The Indian captain is batting like a man possessed, and it is a privilege to see him do so.
Only eight players in the history of Test cricket have scored a double-hundred and a century in the same Test match – a list that included legends like Brian Lara and Greg Chappell. For India, only the great Sunil Gavaskar has done it, in his debut series in the Caribbean in 1971. He certainly won’t mind having more company as Gill joins him in that elite club 54 years on.
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