McCullum's challenge is to cut one-time protégé Gill down to size

"A saying that I've used throughout my career is that, 'If you can't change a man, change the man'," Brendon McCullum said, chewing over a defeat in the eerie setting of a massive empty stadium in Ahmedabad during IPL 2021. "We'll probably have to make some changes and try and bring in some fresh personnel who will hopefully take the game on a bit more."

McCullum's Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) had just been thrashed by Delhi Capitals, and his frustrations focused on their top-order batters. "You're not always going to be able to hit every ball for four or six, but you can have the intent to do so," he said. "It's very difficult if you don't play shots to score runs, and unfortunately tonight, we didn't play enough shots."

Both openers were in the firing line: Nitish Rana made 15 off 12 balls, but Shubman Gill's 43 off 38 was particularly painstaking. After striking at 117.85 across the first seven games of the season, Gill was widely assumed to be the opener who would make way - until the second Covid-19 wave worsened, pausing the IPL season for five months.

"There was a clear disconnect between the style of play the management wanted and what was being produced on the field in the first half of that season," recalls one insider. McCullum and his captain Eoin Morgan made a point of giving their players free licence to play their shots, but they had overseen two wins in seven games when the league was suspended.

But when it resumed in the UAE, both players kept hold of their spots. Rana was pushed down into the middle order, with Venkatesh Iyer making his debut as Gill's opening partner, and his form - 370 runs in ten innings - was a major factor in KKR's resurgence, winning five of their last seven group matches and eventually falling just short in the final.

McCullum had been an early advocate of Gill, adding him to KKR's leadership group as a 20-year-old; Dinesh Karthik, Morgan's predecessor as captain, recalled on the Sky Cricket podcast this week that Gill had been sufficiently headstrong to tell him, "DK bhai, I think it's time I can open now," after a run in the middle order.

The trouble was, ahead of the 2022 mega auction, KKR could only retain a maximum of four players. Keeping hold of Andre Russell, Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy was a no-brainer; for the fourth spot, KKR decided Iyer was their man. "It was disappointing to lose Shubman Gill," McCullum said before the auction. "But that's the way life is sometimes."

Gill became one of the first signings for Gujarat Titans, where he has become an IPL superstar. He won the title in 2022, the Orange Cap in 2023, and became captain last year. A KKR official told ESPNcricinfo that Gill did not actively agitate for a move, and that his release owed simply to a familiar situation where the franchise wanted to retain more players than was permitted.

He has rarely addressed his change of franchise publicly beyond a light-hearted comment last year. Gill was filming promotional content with British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran and Indian comedian Tanmay Bhat when Sheeran mentioned his dinner plans with Shah Rukh Khan, the Bollywood superstar and KKR co-owner. "Ask him why they did not retain me," Gill said, before bursting out laughing.

McCullum only had one more season with KKR, leaving to take up the England job after the franchise missed out on the playoffs in 2022. Gill has come up against him in eight Tests and three ODIs since, and McCullum has watched the player that he helped shape consistently prove himself to be a thorn in England's side.

Eighteen months ago, Gill scored hundreds in Visakhapatnam and Dharamsala in India's 4-1 series win, averaging 56.50 and winding England's bowlers up. "I said something to him like, 'Do you get any runs outside India?' and he said, 'It's time [for you] to retire,'" James Anderson recalled; a few weeks later, McCullum told Anderson that England were moving on from him.

Anderson's comment hinted at the popular perception of Gill as a home-track bully, and before the current England tour, he averaged just 27.53 outside of India. But he has been faultless over the first two Tests, with 585 runs in four innings: "Shubman Gill was batting at an elite level," McCullum said after his 430-run match in Birmingham last week.

As captain, Gill has worked closely with two coaches who are very different to McCullum in Ashish Nehra and Gautam Gambhir. There have been small hints of McCullum's influence when he has spoken about leadership, and his focus on "making players feel secure" in their positions with consistent selection, but he is proving to be his own man.

England will have to find a way to combat him this week - not that Ben Stokes was giving much away on Wednesday. "Very good players are allowed to play well, and he has played very well in the first two games," Stokes said. McCullum knows that all too well: now, his challenge is to cut the monster he helped create back down to size.