Shubman Gill has taken the cricketing world by storm with his stunning exploits in 2023. The stylish right-hander has already slammed five international centuries this year, including a double ton in ODIs against New Zealand.

Gill carried on his brilliant form in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) season, scoring 63 off 36 balls in Gujarat Titans’ (GT) tournament opener against Chennai Super Kings (CSK).

While Shubman has registered scores of 14 and 39 in the last two outings, former India coach Ravi Shastri has put his money on GT opener to break Virat Kohli's record of most runs – 973 – in a single season of Indian Premier League.

In the 2016 edition of IPL, then RCB skipper Kohli aggregated nearly 1000 runs at an average of 81.08 and a strike rat of over 152, including four hundreds and seven fifties.

"He (Gill) has to be an opening batsman, because only then will he get many opportunities to score runs. I feel, it is Shubman Gill because he is in good form and also because he plays top of the order. So he will get good number of opportunities to score runs,” Shastri said during a question-and-answer session through #AskStar.

"The pitches are good, so if he can score 80-100 runs consecutively in two or three innings, then at that point of time only he will already have 300-400 runs.

"According to me, it is very difficult to break the record, because 900 plus runs is huge but one thing is opening batsmen will get two extra matches and two extra innings, so opening batsmen can only break this record if it is possible," he added.

After Virat Kohli, Jos Buttler and David Warner lead the top-scorers' chart in a single season with 863 and 848 runs respectively.

Gill's best season came last year, when he played a key role in GT’s triumphant campaign, amassing 483 runs in 16 innings.

In 77 IPL matches so far, Shubman Gill has scored 2,016 runs at an average of 32.52 and a strike rate of 126.24.

(With PTI Inputs)