The Ascent of (Shub)man

GH on India's new Test captain

Shubman Gill reportedly first picked up a bat aged three. He can hardly have put it down since. Now he is the ‘unanimous’ choice as India’s thirty-seventh Test captain. The temptation is to think that this was always somehow foreordained; it is anything but.

His story is archetypal. Shubman hales from a village in Punjab, Chak Kherewala. His farmer father intuited his potential, and drilled him for hours per day: shades of Cheteshwar Pujara. At a certain point, it became necessary to move to a city: shades of Yashasvi Jaiswal. Yet, of course, there would be numberless such tales - and, as of today, there are probably a few more village dads with stars in their eyes. Those stars will still have to align. They did for Shubman in that he might almost have been designed to capture attention: slim, elegant, handsome, with the natural poise that makes makes the wandering observer linger, sighing dreamily.

Nonetheless, Shubman did not immediately strike one as having a field-marshal’s baton in his knapsack. His ‘leadership potential’, charted by Sid Monga here, did not emerge at once. Shubman was not India’s under-19 captain in their 2018 World Cup victory: that was Prithvi Shaw. He hasn’t led India A; he’s skippered Punjab once. His credentials have been made out almost exclusively in the last couple of months at Gujurat Titans, whom he’s steered to the top of the Indian Premier League table, emulating his coach in that Gautam Gambhir’s appointment last year was predicated on his ‘mentorship’ of the successful Kolkata Knight Riders.

It might be that his appointment owes as much to others’ rulings out. Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have moved on; Jasprit Bumrah is being moved sideways for his self-preservation; Rishabh Pant has moved backwards by his performances. The selectors preferred not to make an interim appointment, like KL Rahul or Ajinkya Rahane. Shubman is roughly the same age as Virat when he took the reins, they can say, and look how that turned out.

There are, however, some unerasable differences. Shubman’s recent form has been chequered: one half-century in his last eleven innings; one Test century away from home, against Bangladesh two and a half years ago. Unless you’re Mike Brearley, a Test captain must be the first-choice member of his XI. Shubman was left out just one Test match ago, and only regained a place because Rohit gave up his; India’s top four is now officially in a state of flux, with Sai Sudharsan and Abhimanyu Easwaran added to the mix for England. Everything Shubman does, to be sure, bears the stamp of quality, whether he’s stroking the ball on the up off the back foot through point or catching surely at slip. But he could do with reinforcing that by a substantial score at Leeds or Birmingham.

The other curiosity of Shubman’s appointment is that it does not immediately confer on him the status it arguably should. Rohit Sharma still leads India in one-day international cricket; Suryukumar Yadav still leads India in T20 international cricket. Arguably more Indians follow those teams than the Test XI. Virat remains his country’s foremost cricket personality, and some believe he surrendered to anno domini too soon; hell, MS Dhoni ain’t done yet. Great claims have been made for the job of the Indian Test captaincy - including, yes, that it’s ‘the second most important one in the country after the Prime Ministers’ - and it would be congenial to believe them. But, especially given the garrulity of his coach, some intrigue will swirl over who is calling the shots. There was no public handover yesterday: rather was it chairman of selectors Ajit Agarkar announcing the transition. The best Test captains have been their own men. Of Shubman Gill, that remains to be proven.