Shubman Gill shot into the limelight by returning as India’s highest run-scorer in their victorious U19 World Cup campaign. Before the tournament, all the focus was on captain Prithvi Shaw, for obvious reasons.
He had kept everyone interested since the age of 13. Prithvi had an average World Cup but Gill caught everyone’s imagination. He was soon picked up by the Kolkata Knight Riders fr ₹1.8 crore.
Gill made his IPL debut the same year but because of the presence of too many batters at the top of the order, he had to bat at No.6 and 7 the entire year. The right-hander from Punjab, scored 203 runs in 13 matches at a strike rate of 146.04. Karthik said Gill was preferred over another talented youngster from Uttar Pradesh, Rinku Singh, who was a dedicated middle-order batter. In the middle of the next season, he went up to then-KKR captain Dinesh Karthik and asked for the opening slot.
A bit taken aback by the demand, Karthik sought time from Gill and gave him the opportunity at the top of the order towards the latter part of the group stage, only when KKR had no chance of qualifying for the playoffs. Gill grabbed the opportunity with both hands with an impressive half-century and never looked back.
Six years later, neither Karthik nor Gill is part of the KKR setup, and the latter has gone on to become India’s Test captain. DK, in a podcast with SKY Sports that also featured former India head coach Ravi Shastri and former England captains Nasser Hussain and Michael Atherton, shared interactions with Gill at KKR.
Here’s Dinesh Karthik’s account of Shubman Gill’s early days at KKR and how his demand to open the batting took him by surprise
“The first time I met him was right from the U19, they had earmarked him as a good player. He got picked for KKR, in which I was leading, sadly, for them. But the point is, he came in as an opening batter. He was somebody who did really well at number 3 in the U19 World Cup.
“But he couldn’t fit in at number 3, we had somebody called Nitish Rana and then we had other batters. So he batted at number 6 and 7, just him and Russell through the middle. He wasn’t definitely customised for that role.
“It was something that he had to work on a little bit. But not once did he frown. I thought he made the most of the situation. But the one thing that did come through was his determination. He wanted to do well. He wanted to be part of the IPL because there was another player there, just behind the ranks, who was doing very nicely. His name was Rinku Singh.
“I played Shubman Gill actually at that stage, slightly ahead of Rinku Singh. And it was a decision that was justified with the way things panned out because he was very calm under pressure. And with someone like Russell, a lot of the time, you would just give him a strike and just observe what’s happening.
“If the game came on the line, he would hit you that one boundary. So you almost knew this guy could handle pressure. And things kept going for a year, year and a half. And the second year when we came back, we didn’t do that well at the start. So one day he walked up to me and said, ‘DK bhai, I think it’s time I can open now.’ You know, you’re the captain, if somebody comes in, do you think there’s an option to open? That would be a nicer question.
“He said, ‘It’s time. I think I’ll open.” So he’s a young lad. He came and said straight up.
“I was a bit taken aback. I didn’t see that coming because we’ve had interactions, always very respectful. He’s coming from a small village. He and his dad used to practise a lot in those areas. They used to have a cement wicket, that’s how he grew up playing with him. For me, it was a bit of a revelation, a young boy coming and saying, ‘I think I’m ready. Now you can send me.’
“I told him, give me a couple of games because the guy who’s there, we need to probably wait for him to fail a little more, because I need to back him as well. He said, ‘Okay, when it comes, please make sure it’s me because I’m ready.’ And the first game he got the opportunity. It came against Punjab Kings. (He scored a fifty) And it was almost like, you know, you’ve made a mistake. We didn’t qualify. It almost was like you made a mistake. If you had sent me earlier, I think we would have qualified. It was that kind of a, without him saying the obvious, it felt like that.