New Delhi: Addressing a pre-match press conference for a Test match for the first time in his career, Shubman Gill was asked if the reality of becoming India’s Test skipper had sunk in. A similar question was asked by an ecstatic Ravi Shastri after the toss on Friday.
“Great day for you. Captain in England for the first time. How do you feel?” asked Shastri. “Great day, you know the sun is out. Looks like a good batting day for us,” was Gill’s response with a smile brimming with confidence.
Eight hours later, when he went back into the pavilion with his bat raised, accepting the ovation from a sizeable crowd at Headingley, Gill had walked the talk, mostly with his bat.
Put to bat first, India openers K.L. Rahul and Yashasvi Jaiswal batted with impeccable awareness of their off stump and were disciplined. However, they did not let the England seamers breathe easy, as every ball that fell in their zone or was too short to take their edges was dispatched for four.
They put on a brilliant partnership for the first wicket with sublime drives through the off side, but Rahul perished chasing a wide full ball that he got on late. Debutant Sai Sudharshan could not overcome his Test debut nerves, and fell to a trap laid perfectly by Stokes, both the captain and the bowler.
All the brilliant work of the openers was compromised in a span of an over, and India needed to rebuild after lunch.
Coming into bat with a baggage of just 559 runs at an average of 25 runs per innings in 13 Tests outside of the Indian subcontinent, the match could well have been a baptism by fire for Gill, the skipper, and the new number four.
He was up against Stokes, who was clearly aware of his counterpart’s weakness. After providing him with a sighter first ball, Stokes let a big booming inswinger to test Gill.
To put into context his struggle against incoming swinging deliveries, Gill averaged 19 against such balls as per data compiled by The CricViz Analyst.
Being known for not moving his front foot too much, mostly attributed to a lack of trigger from his backfoot, which subsequently does not force his front foot to move forward right to the pitch of the ball, he defended it well with front foot right ahead toward the pitch of the ball.
There was no looking back after that for Gill.
Woakes came back with a fresh spell to test his game early on. He got Gill poking at one, followed by a close LBW shout that was missing the leg stump.
However, Gill had got his feet going by then and punched him down the ground on consecutive deliveries to begin stamping his authority at the crease.
Woakes is the best England bowler, suited for classical English bowling conditions, where you have to pitch the ball and let it do the job. But in his desperation, he was too full, and Gill was more than ready. With four fours off Woakes in his two overs, Gill began flowing with his batting.
By pulling out his signature controlled-pull shot, he crossed the fifty mark as Jaiswal was also motoring along at the other end.
There was movement on offer for England seamers, especially on either side of the lunch interval, but they were not consistent in their length. Josh Tongue looked woefully out of rhythm despite playing a first-class game against India A earlier this month. Woakes, who has an impressive record in England for his ability to hit full length and fool batters with wobble seam deliveries, erred on length.
Before the start of the series, batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar had emphasised the importance of solid front-foot defence, while scoring runs square off the wicket, as a go-to mantra for success in England.
His advice was not unique. It’s a widely accepted hypothesis that to succeed in England as a batter, you have to defend straight and play shots, square, along with the swing. It looked like Gill went into bat with those concepts of batting in England tattooed on his mind.
He wasn’t challenged enough however, either by the surface that did not help seamers, or the inaccuracies of the English pace attack.
According to data compiled by the Cricviz Analyst, England seamers could bowl only 29 percent of their deliveries on a good line and length, their first such failure on the first day of a home Test in a decade.
He was offered plenty of fuller balls right beneath his eyeline to help himself to boundaries down the ground, but his trigger movement, which has come under the scanner in the past, looked impressive. He was right to the pitch of the ball while driving and never played loose, away from his body or with hard hands while defending—nightmarish ingredients for a top order batter in England.
Filled with his vintage backfoot punches through the off side, controlled pull shot and exquisitely-timed drives, Gill brought out his Test century, thumping Tongue to the extra cover boundary and let his emotions flow for the only time through the day.
There was chatter on social media and scepticism among former Indian players about Gill’s candidature as a batter in the Indian Test side, considering he was dropped from the playing XI midway through the last Test series in Australia and his subpar batting record outside Asia.
With a commanding century that provided India with an ascendancy on the very first day of a long Test series, he has all but silenced those sceptics and must have earned respect from his teammates.
There could well be tougher pitches in the next games of the series, and he could fail from here, but Gill, both the batter and subsequently his side, has put the best foot forward in the next era of Indian Test cricket.
No wonder, former England captain, Nasser Hussain, had this to say from the commentary box: “A lot of talk before the start of the game was about India’s past, but by the end of the day, it’s India’s future that held sway”.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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I remember how Gill struggled against quality swing bowling in England in the past. The present England pace battery is of poor quality, so he is not being tested the right way.