The Indian Premier League has its own ecosystem. Its inhabitants mostly work and survive with an IPL-centric goal, the franchises leveraging its players for sporting and economic goals and vice versa. But at times, there are individuals for whom the T20 league turns out to be a tunnel which leads to a brighter cricketing career beyond the IPL.

Rishabh Pant and Shubman Gill are two such players for whom this year’s tournament could be the launch pad for bigger goals beyond the IPL.

There’s a T20 World Cup early next year, with India and Sri Lanka as the hosts. But both Pant and Gill, inarguably fine cricketing talents, are currently out of Team India’s scheme of things in the shortest format. There’s still about a year to go for the mega tournament and many things can change in the time between. But what doesn’t change is the importance of the IPL in helping them take a massive stride forward if they wish to break into Suryakumar Yadav’s India T20I team.

Pant and Gill are similar in more ways than one. Both are young captains of their respective IPL franchises and will be fighting to restore the team prestige this year after poor outings last season. The Lucknow Super Giants went all out for Pant, 27, in the mega-auction, paying a record ₹27 crore. They believe Pant can help them turn around fortunes after finishing seventh last year. Gill, 25, on the other hand, will have to marshal his troops wisely at Gujarat Titans if they are to do better than their eighth-place finish last season.

But all that is IPL dynamics. The plot within the plot reveals another story where both Pant and Gill will try to make the right noises as batters and will hope to get the national selectors interested in their abilities in cricket’s youngest format.
What might add a sting to their unannounced war is the
fact that they may end up fighting for the same spot... That of an opener.

In the last T20I series that Team India played, against England earlier this year, Sanju Samson and Abhishek Sharma opened the innings. Though the middle order is a bit crowded, things are still fluid at the top and it is yet to be established that Samson and Abhishek are India’s best choices as openers. So there’s an opening for the likes of Pant and Gill to throw their hats in the ring ahead of the T20 World Cup.

The world knows Gill as an opener-cum-top order batter. But Pant? While it is a fact that the keeper-batter has mostly batted in the middle order, he may shoot a surprise by opening the innings for Lucknow in this year’s IPL. Why?
Because that might be mutually beneficial for the team and the player.

Lucknow do not have specialist openers and one among Mitchell Marsh and Aiden Markram can be one of the openers. So Pant can easily be the second opener. Opening the innings will also benefit Pant because he has the game where he flourishes with time spent at the crease.

Gill as an opener, makes a strong case with his excellent shot-making and strike-rotating capabilities. Pant, with his vibrant bouquet of shots and amazing comfort level against both pacers and spinners, is also an exciting prospect. Their batting styles are different though. But keep an eye on their strike rates, it might see a big spike this year.

So this IPL is an acid test for Pant and Gill. They need to do well as captains, they need to do even better as batters. For competition is tough. Remember, there’s Yashasvi Jaiswal in the fray too, and he has even better numbers to show.