Shubman Gill Picture Credit: BCCI/IPL
Shubman Gill, who made his debut in the Indian Premier League with Kolkata Knight Riders in 2018 has had an interesting time with the franchise. The batter has played a crucial role in Kolkata's opening partnership pair. He has played many match-winning knocks for the franchise. In recent times, owing to his injuries, his form in the recently concluded IPL season was questioned. However, the youngster was backed by the Kolkata Knight Riders' management and staff. Hence, during the second phase of the IPL 2021 season- which was post the COVID-19 scare in the camp, Shubman Gill did incredibly well in the top-order. The franchise was able to jump to the second spot on the points table after the postponement of the league.
However, with the mega auctions round the corner, Shubman was not retained by the Kolkata based franchise. Instead the team used all their four player retention cards in getting Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Venkatesh Iyer, and Varun Chakravarthy back to the gold and purple side.
Very recently, the Kolkata Knight Riders released a short film titled "Love Faith and Beyond" in which Gill revealed that he would like to continue playing for the Kolkata Knight Riders forever. "The kind of bond I have with the KKR franchise is something really special to me. Once you’re associated with a franchise you would want to carry on and play with them forever… And if I would be able to play in purple and gold, I would play forever," Shubman mentioned in the video.
Watch the video here:
"Not every year you can have all the best teammates or all the best players or all your best friends in one team. Instead of cribbing about the fact that we don’t have them we should cherish the time that we had with them,” Gill further stated.
Meanwhile, the short film "Love Faith and Beyond" is created by the Kolkata Knight Riders franchise to thank all those key players that featured in purple and gold.
"Ideally, there are so many players you want to retain but it just does not work that way,” KKR CEO Venky Mysore said. Now, it will be interesting to see if KKR goes after Shubman Gill in the bidding event or not.