Nine Wickets in Sri Lanka. A Ranji Spell Against Rohit. A Life in Punjab Cricket. Amanpreet Singh Gill Was 36.

Amanpreet Singh Gill passed away on Wednesday morning, May 6. He was 36 years old. The Punjab Cricket Association confirmed his death in a post on X, and by the afternoon the tributes had begun arriving from teammates and administrators who had known him across two decades of involvement in the game he never really left.

Born in Chandigarh on September 16, 1989, Gill was a right-arm medium-fast bowler who represented India at Under-19 level, played Punjab in the Ranji Trophy, and featured for Kings XI Punjab in the early seasons of the IPL. He had been suffering from a prolonged illness for the past six months. The cause of death was not made public by the family.

The Under-19 Years and the Company He Kept

In 2007, Amanpreet Singh Gill was part of an India Under-19 side that contained names which would go on to define Indian cricket for the next fifteen years. Virat Kohli, Ravindra Jadeja, Manish Pandey and Saurabh Tiwary were all part of that generation. Gill was the bowler in the group, the one asked to do the work that batting heavy narratives tend to undercount.

That year, India contested a tri nation Under-19 tournament in Sri Lanka involving India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Gill took nine wickets across five matches. That kind of return, in a format and at an age where the margins between being selected and being overlooked are often smaller than the scorecards suggest, was the sort of contribution that earns a player respect within a dressing room even when it does not always earn headlines outside it.

He was not part of the squad that travelled to Malaysia for the Under-19 World Cup later that year, the tournament India went on to win. It is a distinction that follows players throughout their careers, the nearness to something significant rather than participation in it. But those who watched him bowl in Sri Lanka that year knew the quality was genuine. Nine wickets in five games at Under-19 level, against regional opposition of that standard, is a performance that holds up.

The Domestic Career and the Ranji Years

Amanpreet Singh Gill played six First Class matches in his career, all for Punjab, taking 11 wickets at an average of 54.72. The numbers do not tell you what the matches did. His last significant domestic appearance came in a Ranji Trophy game against Mumbai in 2008, a side that included Wasim Jaffer, Ajinkya Rahane, Rohit Sharma, Abhishek Nayar, Amol Muzumdar and Ramesh Powar. Bowling figures of 1 for 85 and 1 for 24 against that lineup, on a surface where the Mumbai batting order was doing what Mumbai batting orders do, was not a match to be ashamed of. It was a contest against the best domestic side in the country at the time.

After that game, Gill gradually moved away from the senior domestic circuit. Whether it was form, fitness, the relentless competition for places in a state with deep fast bowling reserves, or a combination of all three, he did not return to First Class cricket after 2008. He was 18 when he made his debut. He was still a teenager when his most competitive domestic cricket was behind him.

He also played in the IPL, representing Kings XI Punjab in 2008 and again in 2010, the franchise's inaugural season and its third. The IPL's first season was a chaotic, unprecedented, exhilarating event for everyone involved. Amanpreet Singh Gill was part of it. That is not a trivial thing, whatever came after.

Life After Playing and the Selector Years

The measure of a cricketer is not only in what they did on the field. Amanpreet Singh Gill's second career inside Punjab cricket was, by the accounts of those who worked alongside him, just as committed as his first.

He served as a member of the Senior Selection Committee for Punjab across four separate tenures: 2019-20, 2020-21, 2022-23 and 2024-25. Selection work at state level is largely invisible from the outside. It involves watching hundreds of hours of domestic cricket, making decisions that affect young players' livelihoods, navigating internal politics and competing opinions, and doing all of it without the recognition that playing the game brings. Gill did it four times, across non-consecutive years, which speaks to the trust the PCA placed in his judgment and his willingness to remain involved in the structure of the game after his playing days had ended.

The Punjab Cricket Association's statement on Wednesday described him as someone who “served Punjab cricket with dedication and passion.” That framing, dedication and passion, is the language organisations reach for when they want to say someone gave the game more than it gave back, and meant it.

The Tributes

Yuvraj Singh was among the first prominent voices to respond publicly. His message described Gill as “a quiet, hardworking cricketer who loved the game,” and noted that the two had shared a dressing room in their early days. Yuvraj and Gill occupied different strata of Indian cricket, one becoming one of the country's most celebrated match winners across formats, the other working steadily at domestic level before transitioning into administration. But dressing rooms at the state level have always worked this way, senior players alongside emerging ones, all of them doing the same drills and sitting through the same team meetings, regardless of where their careers eventually take them.

Punjab Kings wore black armbands during their IPL 2026 match on Wednesday evening in tribute to their former player. The franchise, which was Kings XI Punjab when Gill represented them in those first two IPL seasons, put up an Instagram story to mark his passing. The gesture matters not because it changes anything but because it confirms that the people who were there in 2008, at the beginning of something that would grow into the biggest franchise tournament in cricket, remembered who else was in the room.

Amanpreet Singh Gill was 36 years old. He had been around the game for more than half his life. The Punjab cricket community, players and administrators who knew him across those years, will carry that weight for some time.

How many cricketers like Amanpreet Singh Gill, domestic contributors who give decades to the game as players and then selectors, go without the recognition their service deserves until the moment they are gone?