During the recently concluded first Test match between India and Australia at Nagpur, a fan was spotted holding a cute placard comparing Cheteshwar Pujara as team India’s next ‘Wall’, comparing him to the former Indian captain and present team head coach Rahul Dravid.
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Pujara has been India’s designated no.3 in Tests for quite some years now, and has emerged to be India’s mainstay in the format, courtesy of his brilliant record so far. Equating Pujara alongside Dravid is not something novel. Some daddy hundreds and consistent run-scoring form on display from the Saurashtra batter often get him placed by the fans right adjacent to the legendary Dravid from time to time.
It is not to pass value judgments whether or not such comparisons are really justified or fair. If one really takes in the manner in which the sport has evolved over the years, and how the playing conditions have changed, such comparisons between two players will always be subjective.
However, when a player from a certain era has managed to take his/her bar or yardstick to a pedestal so high like Dravid managed to do during his international career, fans will naturally seek for a player similar or better than him when he/she decides to hang up his/her boots.
And once they seem to have found the so-called replacement player in the team, the downside is that any lesser performance from this very player than the original star will often make them believe that he is not fit enough to take up his place, or much worse, don’t deserve even a place in the national team.
Who is next Virat Kohli?
When the former India captain Virat Kohli was smashing centuries for fun across ODIs and Tests, and people started believing that they have found the one who would breach the world record tally of 100 international centuries, comparisons between Sachin Tendulkar and him were (and still is) always on.
And just like objective and subjective people can never reach towards a logical conclusion to determine the better of the two in such cases, the ‘Tendulkar or Kohli’ debates and comparisons continue unabated.
This brings us to the question as to who is the next Virat Kohli in the Indian Cricket Team? One may call it recency bias, but considering the ability, stroke-range, the ever-oozing class, and most importantly the age behind him as well, Shubman Gill might well emerge to be the next Virat Kohli.
Having led the Indian team to glory as the vice-captain of the under -19 team in 2018, a right-handed batter, and presently one of the very few players who can play across the three formats of the game, Gill has all the qualities to emerge as the next superstar of Indian Cricket.
Having said that, it is definitely way too early to draw his comparison with any other established player, leave alone with Kohli himself, but this Punjab batter has the ingredients which might take him all the way to the summit.
His classy half-century at The Gabba in the fourth innings, or him equaling the record for highest-ever run tally for a batter in a three-match bilateral ODI series, or scoring the rare ODI double hundred of-late, and even being the highest-run getter in the format for his team since the beginning of last year, Gill has achieved all of it without having played even 50 international matches.
Also when there were naysayers were doubting his credentials as a T20 bat, he smashed his maiden T20I century just a couple of weeks ago against New Zealand.
Considering each and every aspect of his game, it is obviously way to early to state him as the next Virat Kohli, but the comparison cannot out rightly be dismissed under the carpet as well, with the supposedly bright future beckoning him with open arms.
