Gill is the vice-captain of the Indian ODI setup and has scored back-to-back centuries coming into the match against arch-rivals Pakistan in Dubai on Sunday.
“We’ve had a chance to catch up over the last couple of years, particularly around the IPL season. I like his demeanour. He seems like a very driven guy who wants to be the best that he possibly can be with batting and also as far as leadership’s concerned,” Ponting told ICC Review.
“He just seems like a really nice character. A really softly spoken guy, very driven for what he wants to achieve in the game,” Ponting said.
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Ponting said that ODI cricket suits Gill’s style of batting and is confident that the 25-year-old will be soon replicating that success into the longest format too.
“He’s been a very, very good international player for a number of years. He hasn’t sort of transferred that over into Test Match cricket yet, but his white ball cricket over the last three or four years has been outstanding.
“Look, he’s a big game player as well. He’s played really well in IPLs over the last couple of years, obviously being captain of his franchise,” said Ponting.
Ponting, a two-time ODI World Cup-winning skipper, touched upon greater detail behind Gill’s excellence in the format.
“I just think that the white ball game really suits his style of play. He can come out and be nice and aggressive early on in the power play with the field up, get some boundaries away early by playing good, naturally aggressive cricketing shots.
“He’s not a big hitter, he’s not anyone that goes out there and tries to do anything outside of the way that he can naturally play. He just scores boundaries almost at will against fast bowling, against the white ball,” he noted.
