Rising star Indian opening batter Shubman Gill has been constantly smashing records one after another and hitting the right chords since the ODI series against the neighboring country Sri Lanka.
Punjabi lad has got swag, skill, fitness, timing, patience, game awareness, ability to score big, and whatnot. Recently Mr. Shubman Gill has added a new habit to his daily schedule of scoring hundreds, sleeping and repeating.
Like Mr. Gill, the Indian cricket team has also been maintaining a habit of winning bilateral series since 2009 at home turf by winning twenty-four series out of twenty-seven which is insane.
India cricket team beat Kiwis by a huge margin of ninety runs in the third ODI to finish a clean sweep of the three-match series. This famous win led India to win the seventh successive bilateral series win on home soil from December 2019.
The common reason for successive wins has been the top batting order scoring the bulk of runs for the Indian team.
We’ve seen hitman Rohit Sharma scoring those big double hundreds, Indian run-machine Virat Kohli Smashing back to back big tons, and ICC tournaments specialist Shikhar Dhawan supporting the situation in case both right-handers fail to score big runs.
Now, young Indian generation openers like Ishan Kishan, Shubman Gill have started following the footsteps of their senior players and have already scored double-hundred in their careers which is incredible.
Let’s look at the year-by-year performances of Shubman Gill since he made his debut in ODI cricket:
| Series | Mat | Inns | NO | 100s | 50s | 0s | HS | Runs | Avg | S/R |
| 2018-2019 New Zealand v. India | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 16 | 8 | 50 |
| 2020-2021 Australia v. India | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 33 | 33 | 33 | 84.62 |
| 2022 West Indies v. India | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 98* | 205 | 102.5 | 102.5 |
| 2022 Zimbabwe v. India | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 130 | 245 | 122.5 | 120.69 |
| 2022-2023 India v. South Africa | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 49 | 80 | 26.67 | 88.89 |
| 2022-2023 New Zealand v. India | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 50 | 108 | 54 | 83.72 |
| 2022-2023 India v. Sri Lanka | 3 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 116 | 207 | 69 | 122.49 |
| 2022-2023 India v. New Zealand | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 208 | 360 | 180 | 128.57 |
| Overall (8) | 21 | 21 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 0 | 208 | 1254 | 73.76 | 109.81 |
Source:http://www.howstat.com/cricket/Statistics/Players/PlayerSeries_ODI.asp?PlayerID=4769
The 23 -year-old cricketer made his ODI debut against New Zealand at Seddon Park, on January 31 2019. It was a match to forget for the Indian batters as they couldn’t even put a hundred runs on the scoreboard and got bowled out on 90/10.
Shubman Gill only managed to score nine runs in his debut match and you won’t believe Yuzvendra Chahal (18) was the top scorer in the match against Kiwis.
Right-handed batter Shubman Gill got the opportunity to open the innings with left-handed batter Shikhar Dhawan in his next outing against Australia on 2nd December 2020 at Canberra. It was an outstanding supportive inning of thirty-three runs which boosted the confidence of scoring more runs for the country.
Shubman constantly enhanced his performances series by series as he scored two fifties in the next series against West Indies and made his maiden ODI hundred against Zimbabwe later.
Mr. Gill couldn’t end the year 2022 on a high note as he failed to make an impact in the series against South Africa and New Zealand.
Ishan Kishan’s double hundred in the third ODI against Bangladesh almost closed the doors for Shubman Gill’s chance of including him in playing eleven but captain Rohit Sharma and the coach-cum-the wall Rahul Dravid gave him one more chance to prove himself.
The way stylish right-handed batter Shubman Gill picked up the momentum in the final ODI against Sri Lanka and then carried on the red-hot form in the whole series against Kiwis, it was worth having him in the playing XI.
Ishan Kishan got unlucky but Shubman Gill (70, 21, 116, 208, 40*, 112) delivered one after another ‘Paisa-Wasool’ (meaning worthy) performances in his last six ODI innings.
Virat Kohli & Rohit Sharma scoring big hundreds, Shubman Gill & Ishan Kishan’s aggressive intent, Surya Kumar Yadav’s class in middle-order, Hardik Pandya doing what he does best, Kul-Cha playing together, Mohammad Sira becoming #1 bowler in ICC ODI rankings, Umran Malik raising the bar with 150+ bowling.
These are certainly good signs for the Indian team before the ICC world cup 2023. But they just need to work on the deja vu performance in the finals. India hasn’t been able to win any ICC trophy since 2013 and fifty over the world cup since 2011. Will 2023 be the year for the Indian cricket team to stop the jinx of lifting ICC trophies?
