India had to take the field in their World Cup 2023 opening match against Australia without their young superstar Shubman Gill. The 24-year-old who had tested positive for dengue upon landing in Chennai a few days ago hasn’t yet recovered from it and hence had to be excluded from today’s marquee encounter against Pat Cummins’ side.
This is a big blow for Team India as Shubman Gill has been in pristine batting touch this year in ODIs. Gill is the leading ODI run-scorer in the world in 2023 with 1230 ODI runs at an average of 72 with 5 centuries, which includes a double hundred, and 5 fifties in 20 innings. No other batsman in the world has crossed 1000 ODI runs so far this year.
Although head coach Rahul Dravid had said on Friday that India would wait till Saturday to see if Gill could recover, a bout with dengue was certain to lay him down for a few days.
The first signs that Shubman Gill won’t play today came when he didn’t travel with the team from the hotel to the stadium in the last few days, including on the match day and he was told to rest in the hotel.
India captain Rohit Sharma confirmed at the toss that they had waited till Sunday morning to see if Gill might recover, but it wasn’t the case to be. Ishan Kishan, who was the backup opener, was the likeliest choice to play in the absence of Gill.
“Unfortunately he (Shubman Gill) didn’t recover in time, we waited till today morning and he couldn’t recover. Ishan comes in to replace him, he will open the batting,” Rohit said at the toss.
This absence of Gill led to a spate of funny memes on social media.
Hilarious memes as Shubman Gill misses India’s match against Australia:
Teams:
Australia (Playing XI): David Warner, Mitchell Marsh, Steven Smith, Marnus Labuschagne, Glenn Maxwell, Alex Carey(w), Cameron Green, Pat Cummins(c), Mitchell Starc, Adam Zampa, Josh Hazlewood
India (Playing XI): Rohit Sharma(c), Ishan Kishan, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul(w), Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj
