Shubman Gill joined elite company when he followed up his captain’s knock of 269 in the first innings with 161 in the second as England struggled to find a chink in the armour of the man nicknamed “The Prince” at Edgbaston on Saturday.
As India piled on the runs to set the hosts a mammoth target of 608, Gill became only the fifth man to score 400 runs in a test, joining an illustrious list including England’s Graham Gooch, Australian Mark Taylor, Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara and West Indian Brian Lara.
Former England fast bowler Stuart Broad took 604 test wickets but struggled to find a weakness in Gill’s batting.
“As a bowler, I’ll be looking for technical things so I could expose him, but he’s not shown any obvious signs of dismissal and he’s played stylishly,” Broad told Sky Sports.
“He’s played with huge responsibility, under big pressure. It’s breathtaking and deserves all the applause he is going to get.”
India have never won a test match at Edgbaston but the venue will go down in history as the first ground where they registered more than 1,000 runs in a test match (1,011).
In his second match as captain and under fire from day one after resting Jasprit Bumrah, the world’s number one ranked test bowler, Gill took on the England attack and plundered 430 runs in two innings.
He became only the second batter in history to score 200 and 150 in the same test match after Australian great Allan Border, 45 years ago, while he is behind only Gooch (456) for most runs by a batter in a test.
He surpassed Sunil Gavaskar’s long-standing record of 344 runs in a single test for India, which came against the West Indies 54 years ago.
Indian batters have often struggled in seaming conditions in England but Gill mixed elegance and explosiveness to torment the bowlers.
Having also scored a century in the first test, Gill took his run tally to 585 in two matches.
The Indian record for most runs in a test series in England belongs to Rahul Dravid (602) while Virat Kohli scored 593.
Gill could easily break that record at Lord’s in the next match and the sky is the limit with three matches left.
He also set the record for the most sixes by an Indian captain when he cleared the rope eight times in the second innings as India set England a massive target of 608 to win the match.
“Well played, Star Boy. Rewriting history,” Kohli wrote on Instagram. “Onwards and upwards from here. You deserve all of this.”
(Reuters)