Gujarat Titans coach Ashish Nehra has said he is excited to see how Shubman Gill operates during the IPL 2024 season with the additional responsibility of being the captain of the former champions.
With Hardik Pandya heading back to Mumbai Indians, GT decided to hand over the captaincy role to the young Indian star despite having big names like Kane Williamson and Rashid Khan in their lineup.
Gill has had little experience with captaincy, but Nehra said that whole country will be eager to see the batter perform in the IPL. The GT coach said Gill is someone who is looking to do well in all formats of the game and the support staff’s role is to help him grow as a person more than as a captain.
“Very excited to see how Gill operates. The whole of India, not only me,” said Nehra as quoted by Cricinfo. “He is that kind of player. He is someone who is looking to play and looking to do well in all three formats. So we as a franchise, as a support staff, are really excited to help him grow as a person more than as a captain. If he grows as a person, then he will definitely be a better captain going forward.”
Gill not the first example: Ashish Nehra
Nehra would also support the franchise’s decision to give Gill the captaincy by pointing out the examples of Hardik, Shreyas Iyer and Nitish Rana, who didn’t have a lot of experience leading sides before doing the job in the IPL.
“And you know, Hardik also did not captain anywhere before he captained GT. Now there are ten teams. This is not the first example. You will see more and more people, you know, somebody like Shreyas Iyer, even Nitish Rana did captaincy for KKR. So this is a great experience for all these guys and let’s see who capitalises on that and move ahead, again, first as a person then as a player,” said Nehra.
Gill was the Orange Cap winner in last year’s IPL as he scored 890 runs at an average of 59.33. He had scored 3 hundreds and 4 fifties during that time.
