Ruturaj Gaikwad vs Shubman Gill Stats: Test, ODI, T20I & IPL

The question this comparison is really asking is why one of these two captains India and the other has never played a Test, when their first-class and List A records are close enough to argue over. Shubman Gill has 5,677 first-class runs at 50.68; Ruturaj Gaikwad has 3,258 at 45.25. In List A cricket Gaikwad averages 58.61 across 104 matches with twenty-one hundreds — a higher domestic one-day average than Gill has managed anywhere.

The international columns are not close. Gill has 2,969 Test runs at 44.31 with eleven hundreds, 3,379 one-day runs at 60.33 and a Test double hundred; Gaikwad has played no Tests at all, nine one-day internationals for 228 runs, and 23 Twenty20 internationals. Gill has captained India in three formats. Gaikwad has captained Chennai Super Kings.

So the answer is not that Gill is better in every measurable respect. It is that Gill was selected at twenty-one and kept there through poor patches, and Gaikwad was not — and that the two IPL careers, where the sample is largest and the conditions most equal, are closer than almost anyone assumes.

The gap and where it isn't

Measure	Ruturaj Gaikwad	Shubman Gill	Ahead
Test matches	0	41	Gill
ODI runs	228	3,379	Gill
T20I average	39.56	28.03	Gaikwad
First-class average	45.25	50.68	Gill
List A average	58.61	—	Gaikwad
IPL average	39.43	41.42	Gill
IPL strike rate	135.64	142.09	Gill
IPL fifty-plus scores per innings	1 in 3.5	1 in 3.5	level

Gaikwad leads the Twenty20 international average by eleven and a half runs on a fifth of the sample. That figure is the single most awkward number in this comparison and the section below deals with it properly rather than presenting it as a finding.

The career lines

Format	Ruturaj Gaikwad	Shubman Gill
Tests	none	41 matches, 2,969 runs at 44.31, 11 hundreds, HS 269
ODIs	9 matches, 228 runs at 28.50, 1 hundred, HS 105	67 matches, 3,379 runs at 60.33, 9 hundreds, HS 208
T20Is	23 matches, 633 runs at 39.56, 1 hundred, HS 123*	36 matches, 869 runs at 28.03, 1 hundred, HS 126*
First-class	45 matches, 3,258 runs at 45.25, 9 hundreds, HS 195	71 matches, 5,677 runs at 50.68, 20 hundreds, HS 269
IPL	85 matches, 2,839 runs at 39.43, 2 hundreds, HS 108	134 matches, 4,598 runs at 41.42, 5 hundreds, HS 129

Read down the Test row and the comparison looks absurd. Read down the IPL row and it looks like two players of the same quality with a fifty-match difference in opportunity.

Twenty20 internationals, and why the average misleads

Gaikwad's 39.56 against Gill's 28.03 is a real difference in a real format, and it should be treated carefully rather than dismissed.

Half of Gaikwad's Twenty20 international runs came against Zimbabwe (133 at 66.5 from three innings), Ireland (77 at 77.0 from two) and Bangladesh, on tours where India rested most of its first-choice side. His 123 not out against Australia at Guwahati is the outlier that carries the average: 223 runs at 74.3 against Australia from four innings, of which that one innings is more than half.

Gill's Twenty20 international record has a comparable problem in the opposite direction. His best returns are also against Zimbabwe (170 at 42.5), and against sides he has faced most in competitive series — Sri Lanka at 22.5, West Indies at 20.4 — he has averaged in the low twenties.

Neither man has a Twenty20 international record built on a large sample against first-choice attacks. Nineteen innings and thirty-five innings are both too few to separate two batters, and the honest reading is that this format does not discriminate between them at all.

Indian Premier League, where the sample is real

Measure	Ruturaj Gaikwad	Shubman Gill
Matches	85	134
Innings	84	130
Runs	2,839	4,598
Average	39.43	41.42
Strike rate	135.64	142.09
Fours	260	446
Sixes	107	152
Fifties	22	32
Hundreds	2	5
Highest score	108	129

Two runs of average and six and a half points of strike rate separate them across 214 innings between them. That is as close as two openers get.

The phase splits show they get to nearly the same place by different routes:

Phase	Gaikwad runs (SR)	Gill runs (SR)
Powerplay (overs 1-6)	1,394 (128.1)	2,044 (134.6)
Middle (overs 7-15)	1,149 (137.4)	2,080 (147.2)
Death (overs 16-20)	296 (175.1)	474 (155.9)

Gaikwad takes 49 per cent of his runs in the powerplay against Gill's 44, and Gill is markedly faster through the middle overs — 147.2 against 137.4 — which is most of the difference in their career rates. At the death Gaikwad is the quicker of the two, on a small sample: an opener who bats into the last five overs is by definition having a very good day.

Every one of Gaikwad's 2,839 IPL runs has been for Chennai Super Kings. Gill's are split 3,181 for Gujarat Titans and 1,417 for Kolkata Knight Riders, and he has led Gujarat since 2024. Their club records are covered on the Chennai Super Kings and Gujarat Titans pages rather than restated here.

The seasons that diverged

Their season-by-season IPL returns run almost in parallel until 2025.

Season	Gaikwad	Gill
2021	635 at 136.3	478 at 118.9
2022	368 at 126.5	483 at 132.3
2023	590 at 147.5	890 at 157.8
2024	583 at 141.2	426 at 147.4
2025	122 at 150.6	650 at 155.9
2026	337 at 123.4	732 at 163.0

Gaikwad won the Orange Cap in 2021 with 635 runs, outscoring Gill by more than 150 in the same season. He then made 590 and 583 in the two seasons either side of Gill's 890 in 2023, which remains the second-largest total anyone has made in an IPL season.

The split comes in 2025, when Gaikwad's season ended after five innings with an elbow injury sustained while captaining Chennai. He returned in 2026 to 337 runs at a strike rate of 123.4 — his slowest full season — in a year when Gill made 732 at 163.0 and league scoring rates rose generally. Two seasons is not a verdict on a career, but it is the point at which the two lines stop being interchangeable.

First-class cricket and the Test that never came

Gill's first-class record is the stronger of the two on every line: 5,677 runs at 50.68 with twenty hundreds against 3,258 at 45.25 with nine, and a top score of 269 made in a Test rather than a domestic match.

Gaikwad's case has always rested on the fifty-over game instead. His 58.61 List A average across 104 matches, with twenty-one hundreds, is built substantially in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, where he holds the record for most centuries in the competition's history and once made four in a single edition. He is also the only batter in any form of the game to have hit seven sixes in a six-ball over, against Uttar Pradesh in 2022.

That is a domestic one-day record with no equal among current India batters, and it has produced nine one-day international caps. The reasons are structural rather than a judgement on the runs: India's top three in fifty-over cricket has been settled for most of the period, and a batter behind three established names does not get a run of matches. The wider machinery is described in the India A pathway and Indian domestic cricket calendar guides.

Three things worth separating out

Gaikwad has never been dropped for failure at international level; he has been left out for other players' availability. The distinction matters when reading a nine-match one-day record, because nine matches spread across four years is not a trial, and his single hundred in that span came in the fifth of them.

Gill's superiority is largest exactly where the sample is largest and the format hardest. Across Tests and one-day internationals he has 6,348 runs; Gaikwad has 228. Nothing in the IPL columns changes that, and a comparison that leads with the Twenty20 international averages is choosing the least informative number available.

The IPL figures are the only place both have been measured against the same bowling in the same conditions over a hundred-innings sample, and there they are two runs of average apart. That is the strongest available evidence about relative ability, and it says these are peers. The Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal comparison covers the other end of the same selection question, and the cricket in India hub sets both against the wider top order.

Sources and method

Test, one-day international, Twenty20 international, first-class and List A career totals are the published career lines for both players as of August 2026. Both were active when this page was written, so those figures move; Gaikwad's Test row is empty because he had not been capped in the format at that date.

Every Indian Premier League figure here — aggregates, averages, strike rates, boundary counts, hundreds and fifties, and the phase, season and franchise splits — was computed from the ball-by-ball archive published by Cricsheet (cricsheet.org, ODC-BY 1.0), which covers all 1,243 IPL matches played to 31 May 2026. Deliveries bowled in a super over are left out of every IPL total on this page. Balls faced exclude wides; averages are runs divided by dismissals, so a batter not out at the end of an innings has that innings counted but no dismissal charged.

The Twenty20 international opponent splits were computed from the same archive's international file. That file's coverage of men's Twenty20 internationals is complete for the whole of both careers.

Records in the Vijay Hazare Trophy are as reported by the BCCI and ESPNcricinfo. The biographical detail on each player is on the Ruturaj Gaikwad and Shubman Gill profiles and in the wider player directory; this page does not repeat it.