Shubman Gill has moved up the ladder of Indian team leadership in a very short time. Having made his India debut in 2019 in ODIs, he made his Test debut in 2020 and T20I debut in 2023. He is known as the Indian Test captain and vice-captain in ODIs and T20Is.
Shubman Gill hails from Fazilka in Punjab and was coached by his father in his younger days. Recently, during a podcast with Apple Music, Shubman Gill revealed the moment when it became clear to him that cricket was going to be his future going forward.
"Honestly, I realized this was going to be my career when I was 11. Like, a moment happened. There was a camp going on of under-23 Indian fast bowlers, and I was only 11. So, they were more than double my age, most of the players there, and they were a batsman short. One of my really good friends, one of my closest friends who I practiced with, Khushpreet, was in that camp. He was a fast bowler, and he asked the head coach if he could get me because we were a batsman short and we were playing a match," Gill said on the Apple Music podcast.
"And then I was batting way down the order, like at number seven or eight. Our first four or five batsmen got out within four or five overs, and then I went in to bat and scored 90-something not out. "That moment and that inning, like, it was just a practice match, nothing, but the confidence that moment gave me is what made me realize, 'Okay, this is... this is like, I am meant to do this,'" he added.
Shubman further claimed that when he was three years old, he used to imitate the cricketers that his father would watch on television with him. Recognizing his talent, his father began coaching him and having people who came to his farm for labor throw balls at home.
"I then used to sit and watch, okay, what is the batsman doing, how is he hitting, and I used to try to imitate that. When he used to come back and see if I was doing it in the right way. I was about three years old, and he was quite shocked. It is quite rare that a three-year-old can imitate seeing something on the screen that well. And that is how it started. He is also my coach, so that's how he started coaching me. That's how we... so people used to work on our farm, they used to come and throw balls at me, and I used to bat," he said.
He then said that he moved to Chandigarh when he was seven and was enrolled in a cricket academy, which kick-started his cricketing journey.
"When I turned about 7, that's when we came from there to Chandigarh, where I am right now, because back in the village, obviously, there were not many facilities, not many opportunities there. Chandigarh was the capital of Punjab, a very booming city, and that is where we came. He enrolled me in an academy, and that's how my actual cricketing journey started," he concluded.
At 26 years of age in 114 international matches, Gill has scored 6,020 runs in 146 innings at an average of 46.30 and a strike rate of 80.05, with 18 centuries and 25 fifties.
(ANI inputs)
