AA Edit | Axe on Gill Sends Strong Signal

The cricket selectors have acted boldly in dropping T20 vice-captain Shubman Gill from the squad that will be defending Team India’s T20 world title early in the New Year. They placed form over reputation and their own penchant to groom Gill as an all-format batsman and leader. To do so, they had to accept they had been wrong in thrusting a role which the player found difficult to shine in.

It might seem invidious that the same rule of form over reputation was not applied to the T20 captain Surya Kumar Yadav who has probably had a worse run in most recent times with the bat. His time of reckoning may come soon enough as the selectors may not have wished to change both players in leadership roles at the same time ahead of an important ICC event. Yadav’s form may yet bring him down if he is not able to justify his place as a batsman.

The dropping of Gill and the notice served to Yadav serve to remind India’s white ball players that no one is indispensable, particularly in the shorter formats in which India has formidable bench strength. Beyond the warning, the selectors have also picked what could be the best possible combination of big hitters and wicket-taking bowlers for success in a format that is the most unpredictable of the three.

The axing of Gill also serves to render justice to Sanju Samson, who has played with panache in the top order and who got displaced from the playing XI only to accommodate the selectors’ overly optimistic tailoring of a star player into a 3-format performer in the class of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma. Many experiments may have been tried in hitting upon the right squad for slam-bang cricket, but sacrificing Samson as an opener was an illogical sacrifice at the altar of convenience.

The return of Ishan Kishan, about whom fuss had been made over reluctance to play domestic cricket, is ironic considering his immediate form in national limited-overs cricket triggered the U-turn. As another batsman suited to attacking cricket, he can lend striking power to the side even in the lower order. In choosing true T20 specialists, the selectors have owned up that their prejudices and their experiments have pointed the path back to picking of players to serve the ‘horses for courses’ principle.