All-format star and Indian Test captain Shubman Gill talked about the realization that he was destined to play cricket.
Speaking in an interview on Apple Music’s official YouTube channel, Gill revealed: “Honestly, I realised this is going to be my career when I was 11. Like, a moment happened. There was a camp going on of under-23 Indian fast bowlers, and I was only 11. So they were more than double my age, most of the players there, and they were a batsman short.
“One of my really good friends, one of my closest friends who I practised with, Khushpreet, was in that camp. He was a fast bowler, and he asked the head coach if he could get me because we were a batsman short and we were playing a match,” Gill recalled.
“And then I was batting way down the order, like at number seven or eight. Our first four or five batsmen got out within four or five overs, and then I went in to bat and scored 90-something not out. That moment and that innings, like, it was just a practice match, nothing, but the confidence that moment gave me is what made me realise, okay, this is… this is like, I am meant to do this,” he added.
The Indian batting sensation also disclosed that he used to imitate the cricketers his father used to watch on TV with him when he was three years old. His father saw his potential and began coaching him, having those who came to his farm for labor toss balls at home.
“I then used to sit and watch, ‘okay, what is the batsman doing, how is he hitting’, and I used to try to imitate that. When he used to come back and see, oh, if I’m doing it in the right way. I was about three years old, and he was quite shocked. It is quite rare that a three-year-old can imitate seeing something on the screen that well. And that is how it started. He is also my coach, so that’s how he started coaching me. That’s how we… so people used to work on our farm, they used to come and throw balls at me, and I used to bat,” he said.
Gill claimed that his cricketing career was really launched when he moved from Fazilka to Chandigarh when he was seven years old and joined a cricket academy.
“When I turned about 7, that’s when we came from there to Chandigarh, where I am right now, because back in the village, obviously, there were not many facilities, not many opportunities there. Chandigarh was the capital of Punjab, a very booming city, and that is where we came. He enrolled me on an academy, and that’s how my actual cricketing journey started,” he concluded.
From his early days of batting on his father’s farm, Gill has developed into a talented all-format player.
With an ICC Champions Trophy title, an Indian Premier League (IPL) championship, an IPL Orange Cap and a hard-fought 2-2 draw against England in his debut series as captain, the batter seems destined to do even more in the future as the newest Indian cricket icon.
