Punjab Cricketer Amanpreet Gill, Kohli's U-19 Teammate, Dies at 36
Amanpreet Gill, 36, who shared India's U-19 dressing room with Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja, died on Wednesday, Punjab Cricket Association confirmed.
The game was still being celebrated when Indian cricket received the kind of news that makes the celebration feel hollow.
Lucknow Super Giants had just finished off Royal Challengers Bengaluru by 9 runs in IPL 2026, a satisfying result that needed rain’s complicated arithmetic to reach its final verdict. LSG set 209, rain intervened, the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method recalibrated RCB’s target to 213, and the Bengaluru side, despite pushing hard, could only reach 203. Nine runs separated the two sides. The margin was narrow; the drama was typical IPL.
And then, before the post-match discussion had moved past the highlights, the Punjab Cricket Association posted something different on social media.
Amanpreet Singh Gill had passed away Wednesday morning. He was 36 years old.
The name may not ring a bell for casual fans. But within the circles of Indian domestic cricket, it carries the weight of a career built quietly and seriously over years. Amanpreet Gill shared an Under-19 dressing room with Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja when all three were teenagers representing India at that level. That dressing room, in the years around 2006 to 2008, was producing players who would go on to define Indian cricket across formats and decades.
Kohli became a record-setter who rewrote the limits of what Indian batting could look like in all three formats. Jadeja became arguably the most complete all-rounder in Test cricket, a player whose value is most visible when he is absent. Their Under-19 teammate from Punjab played the game at the level his talent permitted, representing his state, contributing to domestic cricket without ever crossing into the national spotlight.
That contrast is not a failure. It is the arithmetic of elite sport, where a handful reach the top and thousands give the best years of their lives to making those few possible.
What makes this particular loss land differently is the age. Thirty-six is not old by any measure outside professional sport. A person at 36 in most professions is mid-career, still building towards something. In cricket, it often marks the start of a transition: from player to coach, from active competitor to mentor, from the dressing room to the viewing gallery.
That transition was still ahead of Amanpreet Gill. It did not arrive.
The Punjab Cricket Association confirmed the death but offered no cause. What they confirmed is the grief within Punjab cricket for a player who was one of their own.
IPL 2026 has been producing the standard spectacle: packed stadiums, close finishes, the compressed intensity that T20 cricket delivers better than any other format. The LSG versus RCB match was a decent example. LSG’s total of 209 put genuine pressure on the chasing side. When rain arrived and the DLS system nudged the target up to 213, RCB’s task became harder. They came within 9 runs. Close, but close means you lost.
LSG’s players celebrated. RCB’s fans went home frustrated. By the next morning, both sides will be thinking about the next fixture.
That’s the tournament’s tempo. It moves fast. It forgets quickly.
Domestic cricket moves differently. State associations, Ranji Trophy campaigns, the Vijay Hazare and Syed Mushtaq Ali circuits, this is where players like Amanpreet Gill spent their careers. The crowds are smaller, the coverage is thinner, and the salaries do not run into crores. But the commitment required is not smaller.
Playing first-class cricket at a competitive level demands the same total devotion as international cricket. The early mornings, the physical toll of regular play, the constant travel, the discipline over a decade or more of serious cricket, these accumulate regardless of whether the stadium holds 50,000 people or 500.
When someone who made that commitment passes at 36, it raises questions that Indian cricket has been slowly confronting: what does the sport owe its domestic players beyond match fees? What health infrastructure exists for cricketers who are not on BCCI central contracts? What support systems kick in for state-level players when their careers end, or when something goes wrong well before they expected it to?
The BCCI has improved domestic pay structures meaningfully in recent years. Ranji Trophy fees have gone up. But the system remains heavily weighted towards those who make it to the national team or into the IPL auction pool. The pyramid beneath that level still needs more attention.
Kohli and Jadeja have both spoken, in different ways, about the importance of domestic cricket to their development. The friends, the rivals, the teammates who pushed them in those formative years under the India Under-19 banner, people like Amanpreet Gill. His contribution to their journey was real, even if it was never measured in international caps or franchise contracts.
The right tribute to a player like this is not only a social media post from a state association. It is building a system where every cricketer who gives serious years to the game in India has access to proper healthcare, financial planning support, and a defined post-career path if they want one. It is treating the pyramid as something more than a factory for national team talent.
IPL nights will keep bringing rain breaks, revised targets, and last-over finishes. That is the tournament’s contract with its audience, and it delivers reliably.
But in the margins of those nights, Indian cricket needs to hold space for the players who built the game at its foundation. Amanpreet Singh Gill played alongside two of the greatest cricketers India has produced. He represented Punjab with consistency and gave his career to the sport he loved.
He was 36. He should have had decades more of that contribution ahead of him. The least the game can do, in his memory and in the memory of every domestic cricketer like him, is make sure those who follow are better looked after.