During India’s optional nets session on the eve of its last 2023 ODI World Cup league fixture against the Netherlands on Sunday, Shubman Gill batted for an hour at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru.
He faced both spin and pace, with the empty stands creating a sense of weekend leisure, perfect for just gazing at the ball’s trajectory as it flew off his willow.
RELATED: India aims to maintain unbeaten streak, takes on the Netherlands in last league game
There are few sounds sweeter in cricket than bat on ball. To truly understand the acoustics of Gill’s batting, one needs to travel back two years to Brisbane. No passage of play perhaps better demonstrates the thrill of the sound of bat on ball than Gill’s duel with Mitchell Starc in the 2020–2021 Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
The context was plain to see. The Indian top-order, to Australia’s vast indignation, was lining up the Aussie quicks on the final day for the knockout blow in its pursuit of a historic Test and series win, and Gill was leading the charge.
Off the second ball of the 40th over of India’s run chase, Gill pulled Starc through wide mid-on for four. Listen to that sound, crack of the willow; it is “shotgun stuff”, as the late Martin Crowe famously remarked about Nathan Astle’s astonishing innings of 222 against England more than two decades ago.
Amidst the din—trumpets, chanting, and screaming—it became the soundtrack to India’s win: the ball being disdainfully middled and the willow swooshing through the breeze. It was a frill-free blend of old and new. If it were a record, then it would be the classic Doors track ‘The End’—a rhapsody of Australia’s impending doom.
Fast forward to 2023, and India’s playing Sri Lanka in a World Cup game in Mumbai. Gill gets on top of a short ball from Kasun Rajitha and scythes it through covers for four. Natalie Germanos in the commentary box can’t help but exclaim, “The sound of the bat was something to admire, that is for sure.”
It hasn’t been Gill’s World Cup yet. For a man who has close to 2000 runs across formats this year at an average of just under 50 with seven hundreds and eight half-centuries, he lies fifth in the list of most run-getters for India in this World Cup so far: 219 runs at an average of 36.50 with two fifties.
But, these are modest returns only by Gill’s standards. He is India’s highest scorer in 2023 in all three formats combined, and, more vitally, it’s around his and captain Rohit Sharma’s starts at the top that India has built its big totals.
On Saturday, where the ball was released from and where it pitched did not matter, only where it was headed, as once again, the most piercing silent scream of Gill’s bat on the ball reverberated around the stadium. Muscular but lithe. It was pure drama.
Five years ago, when India toured Australia, a short one-minute clip of Virat Kohli batting in the nets at Adelaide started a social media frenzy as the echoes of the mesmerizing sounds of leather on willow set the tone — in more than one way — for India’s historic Test series win Down Under.
And now, as someone who has been seen as the natural successor to Kohli for so long, Gill is making the right noises.
Comments
SHARE