Rohit Sharma flattered to deceive on the second afternoon of the Border Gavaskar Trophy 2021 decider at Gabba. Six boundaries had ushered him to 44 when he advanced to Nathan Lyon only to be beaten by the flight and dip, skewing the loft off the inside half of the bat to long-on. Australia posted 369 in the first innings and India were making healthy progress after an early blow, but Rohit’s rush of blood opened the floodgates as India went from 60/1 to 186/6. No prizes for guessing, the knives were out.
‘’That’s an irresponsible shot!’’ Sunil Gavaskar exclaimed. “There are fielders at long on and deep square leg. You’re a senior player, there is absolutely no excuse for that shot. A wicket gifted away. Totally unnecessary.”
Dousing the flamelets, Rohit reasoned that the attacking stroke was part of a larger plan to not let the bowlers settle, adding that he’d improve his execution rather than curbing his dominating instincts. ‘’I actually have no regrets playing that shot. It is something I like to do. Just that Nathan Lyon – we all know he is a smart bowler – bowled into me, which made it difficult for me to get some elevation.”
“Sometimes you get out; sometimes it goes over the rope, but those are my shots and I will keep playing them,” Rohit asserted.
Shubman Gill produced a visual representation of that here-to-rule philosophy two years later. Dancing shoes put on, he was bowled for 5 trying to whack Lyon out of the ground in Indore. Facing only his fourth ball from the tweaker post the dismissal and that too, in the last over of the opening day in Ahmedabad, Gill gave Lyon the charge again, picking the bones out of his tossed-up inviter to send the ball barreling into the sight screen. Backing down in the face of failure? Gill said, loud and clear, we don’t do that here.
Remember his tennis forehand of a pull to Mitchell Starc’s 141.3kmph thunderbolt on the final day in Brisbane? This proclivity to take the game on contributed immensely to Gill’s success on his maiden tour of Australia, when the 21-year-old debuted in the second Test in Melbourne to total 259 runs in the four-match series that an injury-plagued India won 2-1 in incredible fashion. “If they want to play chin music, we have got all the dance moves ready!” Gill proclaimed during the humdinger of a tour.
Gill was a spring chicken at the international stage, freer from the weight of expectations back then as compared to the present day. He was able to express himself without any constraints, a mode of operation that brings the best out of him. As he settled into the Indian team and grew in stature, even outside the national fold as Gujarat Titans awarded him the captaincy, the urge to measure up to the swelling expectations took the gloss off his natural game.
“There was phase in the middle when I was scoring 40s and 50s (52 and 44 against New Zealand in 2021) and getting out and when I played the one-off fifth Test in England, I scored some 20 odd (17) and I got out early,” Gill recalled that underwhelming phase in his 29-Test career.
“I got a feeling that as soon as I was getting set, I was getting over defensive and over cautious. I was thinking now that I have got set, I will have to bat as long as possible. I was putting myself under too much pressure and that is not my game.
“Once I get set, then I get into a sort of rhythm and that’s my game. So I had to tell myself that if I get dismissed while playing my natural game, then it is fine. But problem was I was getting out playing the type of game that doesn’t come naturally to me.”
“If I get out trying to play a shot after getting set, I can accept that dismissal, because that’s a shot and my execution wasn’t proper. But if I get out playing a game which isn’t my style then it became unacceptable to me,” he echoed Rohit’s sentiments.
Between June 2023 to February 2024, Gill went a dozen Test innings without a fifty due to this counterproductive mindset where he was trying to avoid failure rather than chase success. Once the realization kicked in, he was back to his beastly self. Out of the 9 times he scored 25+ since February he converted 6 of those innings, notching up three tons and two 90+ scores while remaining unbeaten on 52 once. 78 of his 110 runs came off boundaries in his Dharamsala ton against England.
It augurs well for India that Gill revisits Australia having rediscovered his mojo. Featuring unique shots like the short-arm jab and the diagonal-batted punch that he uncorks by merely transferring the weight, his backfoot game stands out among the Indian batters, a key ingredient for success in Australia as evinced by the delayed interception points of main acts Virat Kohli and Yashasvi Jaiswal in the Perth Test.
As per his wagon wheel on Day 2, Jaiswal scored 73 runs behind square. Kohli did not bat as far out of his crease in the second innings to avoid committing on the frontfoot and even brandished the upper-cut, a shot that is not a part of his repertoire, to exploit the bouncy Australian conditions.
Gill’s technique, cultivated facing plastic balls on a cement track in his village courtyard, makes him an instinctive cutter and puller. On the flipside, his set-up and approach to the ball – upright stance, firm bottom-hand grip, backlift which often takes his hands away from the body, slow weight-transfer on the frontfoot – leave him prone to full induckers, with Pat Cummins, Kyle Jamieson and even medium-pacers like James Anderson and Chris Woakes breaching the gap between his bat and pad. Gill has worked on tightening his defence and hasn’t lost his poles in last eight Test innings, however two lbw dismissals in that phase suggest there is a scope for improvement.
Shubman Gill hits the nets for the first time since his thumb injury that forced him to miss the Perth Test.
Here’s how the star batter is shaping up! #TeamIndia | #AUSvIND | @ShubmanGill pic.twitter.com/sZtbvQhgLn
— BCCI (@BCCI) November 29, 2024
Batting at one drop, Devdutt Padikkal returned 0 and 25 in the series opener so Gill should be a straight swap with the rookie, bringing him closer to the spot in which he fared so well Down Under. Having kicked off his career as an opener in Test cricket, Gill was dropped down the order to replace Cheteshwar Pujara in the aftermath of India’s defeat in the 2023 WTC final. In 14 matches at the No.3 position, Gill has scored 926 runs at an average of 42.09, including 3 hundreds and 3 fifties.
After missing the first Test due to a thumb injury, Gill got some miles under his legs in the practice match against the Prime Minister’s XI. Batting at one drop, he composed an archetypally fluent half-century before retiring. The wrinkles ironed out, Gill is primed to perform and India, yearning a 4-0 result in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, will hope for an encore of his maiden tryst with Australia.
