IND vs NZ 2023: Prithvi Shaw has to wait as Shubman Gill will start, says Hardik Pandya ahead of 1st T20I

Ahead of the start of the three-match T20I series against New Zealand, newly-appointed India’s T20I captain Hardik Pandya said the returning Prithvi Shaw will have to wait for his chance as the man-in-form Shubman Gill will be preferred over him for the Ranchi game, scheduled to begin on Friday, January 27th. Gill became the youngest batter to register a double hundred against the Kiwis in the first ODI in Hyderabad, hitting 208, while in the final One-Dayer in Indore, he scored yet another century – ending the three-match series with 360 runs at an average of 180.

“Prithvi Shaw will have to wait for his opportunity as Shubman Gill has done very well and was already part of the T20 team,” Hardik Pandya said in the presser in Ranchi.

Gill, who got preferred over Ishan Kishan before the start of this series at a time when Kishan had notched up the fastest double hundred in ODIs against Bangladesh in his last game, will again be played ahead of Shaw. Prithvi, who kept pressing his case for a place in the team owing to remarkable performances in the domestic cricket, finally got picked for New Zealand T20Is. He, however, falls second in the pecking order when it’s compared to Gill in white-ball cricket.

Meanwhile, both Shaw and Gill were part of India’s Under-19 World Cup squad that won the title in 2018 against Australia in the finals. Though Shaw got his chance first as he scored a debut Test hundred against the Windies, Gill took some time before getting roped into the Indian team. His main contribution, however, came during the 2020/21 Border-Gavaskar series in Australia where he scored 259 runs in three Tests opening against the best pace attack in the world.

It was on that tour only when Shaw failed to deliver across two Tests and was later dropped. The team persisted with Gill across formats after that and it paid dividends as Gill kept scoring runs at consistent rate against top teams in different conditions. Going by how he is playing at the moment, it would be hard to look beyond Gill in the opening slot.

Here’s India’s squad for New Zealand T20Is –

Hardik Pandya (captain), Suryakumar Yadav, Rahul Tripathi, Shubman Gill, Prithvi Shaw, Deepak Hooda, Washington Sundar, Shivam Mavi, Ishan Kishan, Jitesh Sharma, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Umran Malik, Mukesh Kumar