The Wisden Trophy is awarded every year to the cricketer who has produced the outstanding Test performance of the previous 12 months. Shubman Gill has won the Wisden Trophy in 2025, for his 269 and 161 against England at Edgbaston. George Dobell’s piece on Gill’s performance originally appeared in the 2026 edition of Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack.
Shubman Gill arrived in Birmingham under pressure. He had recently become India captain, and his team had lost the first Test of the series, in Leeds. If some thought him partly to blame, they might have had a point: Gill had made 147 in the first innings, but his dismissal, caught on the leg-side boundary attempting an almighty heave, precipitated a decline from 430-3 to 471 all out. From an apparently impregnable platform, India succumbed to defeat.
He had faced questions even before that. Coming into the series, he averaged a modest 35 in Tests, and 29 outside India. For a man attempting to fill the boots of Rohit Sharma or Virat Kohli, those numbers were worrying.
At Edgbaston, he silenced the doubters. Not only was his first-innings 269 the highest for India outside Asia, but the highest by an India captain anywhere. He followed it up with a second-innings 161. Only Graham Gooch (with 456 against India at Lord’s in 1990) had scored more than his 430 in a Test.
The manner in which Gill batted was as impressive as the statistics. Having played himself in carefully, courtesy of a defence that could keep out the rain, he was elegant on the drive, commanding against the short ball and increasingly dismissive of spin. From an uncertain 211 for five in the first innings, he took India to a commanding 587, and kept England in the field for 151 overs. It was clearly a good pitch, but ESPNcricinfo calculated that his control percentage – 93.28 – was the highest for a Test century in England (and the third-highest anywhere) since such data was first collected in 2006. This was a man who had learned the lesson of Leeds.
He was, if anything, even more dominant in the second innings, when he became the first to score 200 and 150 in the same Test; only Allan Border, for Australia against Pakistan at Lahore in 1979/80, had twice scored 150-plus in the same match. And it underlined the point that this was a man with a hunger for runs which was not to be easily sated. More importantly, it set India up for a first Test victory at Edgbaston (after seven defeats and a draw), and their biggest win by runs in an away Test. Any questions about Gill’s leadership had, for now at least, been answered.
“This is something that I would cherish for the rest of my life,” he said. “Probably, whenever I retire, I think this would be one of my happiest memories. I thought that, if I’m set, no matter how many runs I’m batting on, I cannot leave the match hanging. I wanted to make as few mistakes as possible. Sometimes, you need to lead by example.”
Gill certainly did that at Edgbaston.
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