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Legendary Indian cricket team batter Krishnamachari Srikkanth believes that Shubman Gill needs to start scoring runs consistently away from home in order to justify the fanfare around him. Gill has been exceptional for India in white-ball cricket but his numbers in Tests outside India has not been that prolific. Srikkanth pointed out that it is unfair to expect numbers similar to star batter Virat Kohli but added that Gill needs to work towards replicating such numbers and prove himself to be a valuable asset.
“Shubman Gill has to perform well across the world. Scoring runs in the sub-continent alone doesn’t help. He has to score runs overseas. Why are we calling Virat Kohli the King? Look at his record, even in the last year, be it Test matches, ODI or T20Is. Just look at his records. I have nothing more to say. Yes, I accept you can’t produce a Virat Kohli every time. Everybody can’t be producing Virat Kohli (Kohli-like numbers). But you have to try and get to at least a bit of that stature,” he said on his YouTube channel.
“I think the hype around Shubman Gill, quite a few are saying ‘he is the next this, next that’. I think we will have to wait and see. I wouldn’t overrate him, I wouldn’t want to underestimate him.”
“KL Rahul is someone who has been underperforming. With the class that he has, he can become at least 60 to 70 percent of what Virat Kohli has become. That’s my rating. Rishabh Pant is another class player. He is on another level. Unfortunately, we don’t have him for selection now,” Srikkanth added.
Meanwhile, India’s young batsmen will simply have to find a way to cope with South Africa’s “challenging” conditions, Indian captain Rohit Sharma said on Tuesday.
Sharma said he did not expect conditions for the second Test, starting at Newlands on Wednesday, to be much different from those at Centurion, where India were beaten by an innings in the first Test.
“The pitch looks pretty similar to Centurion,” he said. “Maybe not full of grass but there is enough covering of grass on the pitch.”
Sharma missed his team’s tour two seasons ago because of injury but said teammates who were in Cape Town said conditions appeared to be much as they were then, when the highest team total in a tightly-contested match, won by South Africa, was 223.
(With AFP inputs)
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