T20 cricket may not be Shubman Gill’s natural format: Sanjay Manjrekar

2026 has been a year of reckoning for Shubman Gill in T20 cricket. The Gujarat Titans opener and skipper started the year as India’s T20 vice-captain, but a series of low scores resulted in him being dropped ahead of the T20 World Cup, and raised questions about his suitability to the shortest format of the game.

He is now captaining Gujarat Titans in IPL 2026, where he has scored 373 runs at an average of 46.63 with a strike rate of 155.42 in IPL 2026.

Former Indian batter Sanjay Manjrekar believes that T20s may not be the natural format for the Indian Test captain.

“When he started to play for KKR at the top of the order, when he started compiling good T20 innings, I saw an effort from his side to be an impactful T20 player. But that is not his natural game, his natural game is Test cricket. When we saw him in England, that was the best of Shubman Gill, unlike an Abhishek Sharma,” he said on Sportstar’s Inside Edge podcast.

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The Mumbai batter further reminisced about Gill’s growth in Indian cricket over the years.

“When Rahul Dravid was the coach of the Indian Under-19 cricket team, Prithivi Shaw was touted to be the star in the U-19 cricket team. When asked about it, Rahul Dravid used to say he is not even the best player in the team. There is a guy named Shubman Gill, he’s better, and then Gill showed his class,” he added.

He also noted the influence Gill’s father, Lakhwinder Singh, had on his game, saying, “He’s a hard-core cricketer, who follows his son’s cricket very closely. He’s the purest kind of cricket fan, so someone Shubman Gill has a kind of purity to his game.”

Published on May 02, 2026