Shubman Gill breaks Sunil Gavaskar’s record, becomes the highest run-getter in Test series as Indian captain

Indian skipper Shubman Gill continued to break records on the ongoing tour of England. Gill has gone past Sunil Gavaskar’s record of most runs in a Test series as an Indian skipper. Gavaskar scored 732 runs against the West Indies in the 1979-80 series and thus Gill needed another 11 runs to leapfrog former Indian opener’s tally on Thursday.

At lunch on the opening day of the fifth Test match against England at the Kennington Oval, London, Gill was batting unbeaten on 15 runs. Gill was able to go past Gavaskar’s tally when he hit a boundary against Jamie Overton in the 21st over.

The youngster has thus far amassed 737 runs in the ongoing Anderson-Tendulkar series as he has batted at his absolute best. Gill aggregated 430 runs in the second Test at Edgbaston, Birmingham and played a key role in India’s huge win of 336 runs.

The flamboyant batter once again scored a crucial knock of 103 runs off 238 balls in the second innings at Old Trafford and thus helped India save the last Test.

Meanwhile, England’s stand-in captain Ollie Pope decided to bowl first after winning the toss at the Oval. India has made four changes to their playing XI with Dhruv Jurel, Prasidh Krishna, Karun Nair, and Akash Deep coming into the team. 

The home team has also made four changes to their final XI after Ben Stokes was ruled out with a right shoulder injury.

India (Playing XI): Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill(c), Karun Nair, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jurel(w), Washington Sundar, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Mohammed Siraj

England (Playing XI): Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope(c), Joe Root, Harry Brook, Jacob Bethell, Jamie Smith(w), Chris Woakes, Gus Atkinson, Jamie Overton, Josh Tongue