There’s no denying that the new poster boy of Indian cricket is Shubman Gill. The 25-year-old, as coach Gautam Gambhir put it, was thrown into the deep sea and has learned to swim. Gill has taken charge of a Test side in transition after the retirements of Virat Kohli, R. Ashwin and Rohit Sharma. If early signs are anything to go by, India under Gill and Gambhir look capable of staying afloat and finding their way to shore even in testing waters.
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The transition in Test cricket was always going to be the toughest. Gill inherited a team stripped of at least two of its biggest match-winners. He assumed responsibility after a bruising 0–3 defeat at home to New Zealand — a setback that rocked Indian cricket’s sense of invincibility in familiar conditions. The subsequent tour of Australia laid bare deeper fault lines: dressing-room leaks surfaced, fractures within the side became public, and retirements that had been looming — particularly those of Kohli and Rohit — were suddenly accelerated.
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