The recently selected India Test captain, and vice captain in limited overs formats, Shubman Gill, has made known to us who he looked up to as a child, and interestingly enough, Rohit Sharma was not on the list. Gill in a podcast on Apple Music stated that he has always had Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli as his two heroes in cricket.
Who are Shubman Gill’s Two Cricket Idols?
Gill had said that he had admired Tendulkar at an early age not only due to his amazing talent, but because Tendulkar was the favourite son of his father and he wanted to play like him. He remembered how, circa 2011 til 2013, when Sachin was retiring, and when cricket moments were making a great impression, Gill was starting to get a sense of the game beyond technique, its mental and tactical aspects. When Gill grew up as a player, he began to closely observe Virat Kohli, especially the hunger, intensity, and passion of Kohli. Gill talked of how those attributes, the determination, the inability to rest attitude, assisted in molding his own mental outlook. He could see that one can work on skill and technique, but that something, such as hunger, comes naturally, and Kohli was abundant in it. This is a revelation that is coming at a crucial point in the career of Gill.
Why not Rohit Sharma over Virat Kohli and Sachin Tendulkar?
As Rohit Sharma is no longer playing Test cricket and India is going through a period of change in its leadership, Gill has assumed big responsibilities Test captain, ODIs and T20Is vice captain, to say the least, big shoes to fill. Gill chooses Tendulkar and Kohli as his role models and stresses his origins and the values he has been brought up with: technique, mental strength, passion and desire to perform. By doing so he indirectly points out that despite his own approach, his own basis has been laid on legends that have shaped the face of cricket in India over decades.
