Shubman Gill’s undefeated century helped India demolish New Zealand in the third Twenty20 International on Wednesday.
He has always been an anchor in the IPL, but on Wednesday he consistently smashed the ball on the rise from the start.
Hardik Pandya has recently lost form and missed a wide yorker from debutant left-arm seamer Ben Lister. Blair Tickner has mastered the wide yorker, but Shubman continues to struggle. Gill sits deep in the crease, retains his shape, and punches it away with his neurosurgeon-like hands between the keeper and short third. Tickner falls to his knees in surprise, while Hardik nods in admiration of Gill’s exceptional ability to make the bowler’s best ball appear like a poor one.
Lister then attempts a wide yorker to Gill with deep point protection and a short third in place, but Gill is so adept that he can cut it away between the two fielders. If you’ve been following Lister in the Super Smash for Auckland, you’ll know that his best ball is the yorker, though he also has some cutters in his arsenal.
Lister relies on his finest ball once again, shifting his line much straighter and darting it on the stumps. Okay, he missed his length by a few inches, but it’s still a difficult delivery. Try telling Gill that. He displays the entire face of the bat and blasts it down the field, precisely dividing long-off and long-on. Michael Bracewell and Finn Allen are now staring at each other in bewilderment.
Gill then goes on to score an undefeated 126 off 63 balls in the series finale in Ahmedabad. That is two runs per ball at a location where the square and straight boundaries are approximately 70 meters apart. Hardik and Rahul Tripathi were both caught on the boundary in Ahmedabad, which is no Indore. But this guy, who is only 23 years old, clears the boundary seven times while also handling the field effectively.
When they first met in Australia in 2021, Rohit Sharma saw Gill as a true Test-match batsman. Gill recently reinforced his maturation as an ODI opener with a magnificent double-century against New Zealand in the first ODI in Hyderabad. That massive knock also secured him the starting spot for India in the 2017 ODI World Cup in October-November. Gill was more Clark Kent than Superman in T20 cricket until Wednesday.
On the eve of the T20I series opener in Ranchi, Hardik was asked if Prithvi Shaw will bat first upon his comeback to the team. Shaw has been the fastest-scoring Indian opener in the powerplay since his T20 debut in 2018, and his strike rate of 152.27 during this phase is among the highest in the globe.
Hardik, on the other hand, asserted that Gill would be given the “first opportunity” ahead of Shaw and encouraged him to succeed.
While Gill didn’t accomplish much in the first two T20Is on “shockers,” he demonstrated in the third that he had got the gears to keep up with the hectic speed of T20 cricket. He has often been the anchor at the top for the Kolkata Knight Riders and Gujarat Titans in the IPL, but on Wednesday night, he hung up the caution and consistently smashed the ball on the rise. Overall, Gill scored 34 points on the powerplay, his highest total during this period to date.
When Tripathi teed off, Gill merely sat back and dinked the ball into the spaces. However, when Tripathi holed out and Gill reached his first fifty off 35 deliveries, he sped to his second fifty off only 19 deliveries.
He comprehensively outperformed New Zealand as India won the T20I series 2-1