Young Indian opener Shubman Gill has beaten tough competition from New Zealand’s Devon Conway and fellow countryman Mohammed Siraj to be named the ICC Player of the Month award for the month of January 2023.
Shubman Gill was in excellent form in Bangladesh and thanks to that, he got a maiden T20I cap during the three-match home series against Sri Lanka, where he managed scores of 7, 5, and 46. He then aggregated 207 from three ODI innings against the island nation, including 70 and 116 in the first and third games respectively.
Till date, Shubman Gill has played 1254 runs in 21 ODIs with 4 centuries and 5 fifties, while in 6 T20Is, he has 202 runs. In 13 Tests, Gill has 736 runs with one century and 4 fifties.
For Gill, the standout knocks in January came against New Zealand. In the first ODI against the Kiwis, the Punjab lad smashed 208 off 149 on a day when none of his teammates crossed 28, to power India to a match-winning score of 349/8 in what turned out to be a nail-biting thriller.
He hit 9 sixes and 19 fours and only got out in the last over. He got to the 200-run milestone by smashing three consecutive sixes of Lockie Ferguson. He became the fifth Indian to register an ODI double-hundred, after Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Rohit Sharma (thrice) and Ishan Kishan.
He finished the three-ODI series with scores of 40* and 112 – the latter being his fourth ODI ton, as he helped India whitewash New Zealand 3-0.
Shubman Gill equals Babar Azam’s ODI series record and then masters the T20I format as well
Shubman Gill scored 360 runs in 3 ODIs, equalling the record for highest ever for anyone in a three-match bilateral ODI series, held by Babar Azam’s record against the West Indies in 2016-17.
After a lukewarm performance in the first two T20Is, Shubman Gill showed his class at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad in the third and final T20I and hammered 126* off just 63 deliveries. He broke Virat Kohli’s record of 122*- the highest T20I individual score for India.
He also became the fifth India batter to score a hundred in each of the three international formats joining KL Rahul, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli.