IPL 2026: Why It's Too Early To Write Off Shubman Gill
Even if the Indian T20 setup appears crowded to the point of exclusion, a season of substance at the format’s most dazzling stage, can reopen the doors for India’s next anticipated all-format great
The year was 2023, and Shubman Gill still felt inevitable. In Ahmedabad, against the Mumbai Indians, he toyed with the bowlers—129 off 60, fleeting in explosiveness, inexhaustible in ease and timing. This was Gill’s IPL at the time: high-elbow elegance meeting ruthless accumulation, orthodoxy moving at modern speed. The total, the moment, even the outcome, all of it seemed preordained.
The highest individual score in IPL playoff history took the Gujarat Titans to another final, reinforcing the sense that both the player and the franchise were rising in tandem. If you were in that stadium that night, it would have been difficult to imagine a future where Gill’s place in India’s T20 setup would be doubted.
However, this was before the format lurched further into excess before players like Abhishek Sharma began treating bowling attacks less like opponents and more like inconveniences. Before “intent” became so exaggerated, it threatened to swallow the craft whole. And, crucially, before Gill, once framed as Indian cricket’s all-format constant, found himself nudged into an uncomfortable question: is he, in fact, built for this format?
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It’s an odd place to occupy, being central and absent at the same time. Central to everything India is building in Tests and ODIs; absent from the format that moves the fastest and forgets the quickest. He arrives this IPL season as India’s Test and ODI captain, which still sounds faintly unreal until you remember England. The runs. Over 700 in a series away from home, which is the kind of thing people usually spend careers circling.
It was because of such shows, that for the longest time, Gill wasn’t just India’s next big batter; he was imagined as the bridge across formats, the heir apparent in an era defined by fragmentation. The trajectory felt linear, almost pre-written.
And then, suddenly, it wasn’t.
A visible dip in T20 return arrived just ahead of a World Cup that India would go on to win with a line-up built on immediacy and force. In the afterglow of that success, there was little urgency to revisit what had been set aside.
All of which brings a sharper edge to this IPL.
The obvious temptation is to speed up, to swing earlier, force the game and match the breakneck pace at which T20 cricket now operates. You don’t need me to tell you how that would be a mistake.
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Gill walks into the 19th season of the IPL as a stylistic outlier chasing relevance, rather than the next-generation great he was meant to be. What he needs, paradoxically, is patience in a format that rarely rewards it. Even in the New Zealand bilaterals, there have been moments where the pressure to fit into India’s hyper-aggressive template has felt visible in his game. The constant anxiety of strike rates ticking jarringly in the background.
Because, inevitably, they do. Strike rate is the phrase of the moment, invoked by everyone, understood by few. And while this Indian T20 side is rich in firepower, it also flirts with excess. Too much intent can tip into impatience. Too many aggressors can collapse in on themselves. And when the law of averages catches up, when international attacks start finding ways to keep the Indian juggernaut in check—like with Abhishek Sharma at the World Cup—someone will need to hold and pace the innings. It’s a role Gill is uniquely equipped to fill. Which is why this IPL is about reinventing, yes, but also going back to the basics for the skipper.
The IPL, after all, has a way of rearranging things. It is a circus, a collision of cricket and spectacle, but also something more forgiving: a space where second chances are gently slipped in. So, if Shubman Gill is to fulfil his prophecy, then he must do it starting March 31, when the Titans take the field for the first time this season.