L. S. GILL


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L. S. GILL
(16 Dec 1909 - 19 Nov 1985)

Kuala Lumpur born Lall Singh Gill was a member of India's Test cricket team on her inaugural tour of England in 1932. He was a lively right-handed batsman and an outstanding fielder...

In the only Test played during the tour, batting at number eight in the first, Gill scored 15, and 29 runs in the second innings at number seven, and had a run-out and a catch to his credit...

He represented India in just one more unofficial 'Test' at Bombay against Jack Ryder's Australian side in 1935-36...

Playing for Maharaja of Patiala's XI, Southern Punjab and Hindus in the domestic circuit, Gill scored 1123 runs in 32 first class games @24.95, 107* his highest, 5 fifties and 23 catches...

Gill's lone first-class hundred (107*) was in the 1935-36 Bombay Quadrangular Tournament for Hindus against Parsees at Gymkhana Ground, Bombay. Coming in at No. 8, he shared an unbeaten stand of 132 for 7th wicket with Vijay Merchant (30 not out).

The youngest of three siblings of an affluent Gill Jat family who had migrated to Malaya three generations before, Gill's passion for the game and eagerness to play at the highest possible level was aided by his mother who helped him find a place in the Maharaja of Patiala XI, led by Maharaja Bhupinder Singh himself. Joining the team in 1931 Gill got the India call for her first ever Test, the 1932 England tour. His captain, who was the Indian skipper as well, took ill and was replaced by Natwarsinhji Bhavsinhji, the Maharajah of Porbandar...

Gill's closeness to Maharaja Bhupinder Singh led to enmities, as a result of which there was an attempt on his life in 1936. Surviving a serious injury, Gill left for Paris accompanied by his partner Myrtle Watkins, an Afro-American singer, who performed at Bombay's Taj Mahal Hotel. The failed tryst saw him back in Malaya in August 1939, and after just a month began WWII...

Three years into the war, Gill lost his two siblings to the Japanese and found himself in their captivity. Gill managed to escape from a slave labour camp in Borneo by the end of the war, but his family had lost almost everything. He became the groundsman at the acclaimed Selangor Club in Kuala Lumpur for sheer survival. Luckily in 1950, the Sultan of Selangor, Sir Hishamuddin Alam Shah Al-Haj, a friend of the Gill family, shocked to see Lall Singh working as a groundsman, took up their cause and reinstated most of the assests the family had lost...

The first Malaysian Test cricketer, Gill spent his later days travelling abroad, mostly to Paris on a yearly basis in summer. He died peacefully on 19 November 1985 in Petaling Jaya, Kuala Lumpur...

The inter school cricket 'Lall Singh Shield' and the inter club ‘Lall Singh Trophy' are annual tournaments held in Kuala Lumpur in his memory...

🙏🙏🌹💐

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