Former England player Mark Ramprakash has hailed Shubman Gill for his stamina, skill and hunger, saying the young India batter and captain has shown he is capable of filling the boots of the 'Fab Four' of world cricket whose era is nearing an end.
Gill scored 269 and 161 in the two innings of the Birmingham Test, adding to his 147 and 8 in the series opener at Leeds. He has totalled 585 runs in two Tests of the five-match series.
"We have to pay testament to his stamina, his skill and his hunger – not just for runs, but to set an example as the new captain of a young team," Ramprakash wrote 'The Guardian'.
"We are coming to the end of a period that has been dominated by the so-called Fab Four – Virat Kohli, Joe Root, Steve Smith and Kane Williamson – and the search has been on for players who can take over.
"Gill has shown he can fill those boots and in a wonderfully orthodox style: he plays all formats and is brilliantly adaptable, but with a foundation of classic technique."
The 55-year-old Ramprakash, who played 52 Tests between 1991 and 2002, said instead of captaincy affecting Gill's performance, it has made him more focussed.
"Captaincy can affect a player’s form detrimentally, but it seems to have focused him and his three highest Test scores have been made in the past three weeks."
The 25-year-old Gill became only the second Indian after Sunil Gavaskar to register both a double century and a hundred in the same Test.
Gill also became the first Indian and Asian captain to score a double hundred in a Test match in England as the visitors registered a massive 336-run win over the hosts to level the five-match series 1-1.
India had lost the opening Test at Leeds by five wickets.
"Two games into the series we have already witnessed something very special from Shubman Gill. In the second Test at Edgbaston he produced a real rarity: an individual performance that defines and dominates a game," Ramprakash wrote.
"Not just piling on the runs, but forcing his opponents to toil in the field until they felt exhausted and out of options. That fatigue affects batters’ mental clarity and their decision-making -- what to play, when to leave -- as well as their movement and their footwork.
"Reducing England to 25 for three at the end of the second day went a long way to deciding the match. As well as India bowled with the new ball, it was Gill’s remorselessness that created the conditions for it to happen." The third Test will be played at Lord's from Thursday. PTI ATK PDS PDS
