Unlike football, where the manager is the real boss of the team, cricket has been and always will be a sport where the captain is the ultimate authority. If there is ever a clash between the captain and the coach, as was the case between Anil Kumble and Virat Kohli a decade ago, it is the captain who eventually prevails. From that standpoint, the Sri Lanka series is a very important one for Shubman Gill.
While there is no clash whatsoever between Gautam Gambhir and Gill, the truth is that Gill needs to make the team his own and be his own man.
As a batter, he is India’s best red-ball player at the moment. He looks sublime, and the 2025 England series saw Gill coming of age as a Test batter. Sadly for him and for India, he was injured in Kolkata in the game against South Africa and could not play any further part in the series. I still believe that had Gill played the Kolkata Test, India would have won the contest. Rishabh Pant led the team in his absence in Guwahati, and India lost the match and the series.
From here, it is an uphill task for India to make it to the World Test Championship final. In fact, it is almost impossible. Having said that, sport has seen funny things happen, and Gill should take it one match at a time.
Debasis Sen and Vaibhav Tripathi, who are both in Sri Lanka for RevSportz, confirmed to me that Gill was seen supervising every lower-order batter in the nets yesterday. While he was not batting because of his injury, he made it a point to oversee the net session. That is how it should be. A more assertive and dominant captain is what India will ask of Gill in Sri Lanka.
In all fairness, Gill has also been unlucky on occasions. After a fantastic England series, he missed out against South Africa with a freakish neck injury. The neck issue was not really a one-off. It has been a persistent problem and has troubled him all along. Now, in Sri Lanka, he was forced to miss the practice game after injuring his finger. While his omission from the training game is more precautionary, the truth is that it also impacts his own preparation ahead of the Test match.
Gill is at a stage of his career where he can now power on to become the best in the world. The New Zealand series will test him, and if he does well in those conditions against a quality red-ball attack, he will have turned a new leaf in his career.
Clearly, the time for him is now.
Can he march on, take control and become the leader India expects him to be? The early signs in England in 2025 were good, and the series will forever rank as one of the best of all time. But those gains were eroded by the defeat against South Africa, and India needs a reboot.
Can Gill lead that process and make things happen?
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