Critical voices on the rife as the Indian batting sensation endures a lean mid-year patch after dominating the home season and the IPL for Gujarat Titans.
Shubman Gill’s persistent struggles for timing and flow in the Caribbean has given way for the critics to jump on the young Indian batting prodigy. After a disappointing World Test Championship (WTC) final against Australia in June, the elegant right-hander missed out in his three innings of the West Indies Tests and has mustered just one half-century in the six innings of the limited-overs leg of the tour so far.
Given that fans tend to run short on memory bank these days amidst the advance of social media and reel culture, Gill’s dominating run at the start of the year, where he bossed the ODIs and T20Is versus Sri Lanka and New Zealand and backed it up with a Test century in Ahmedabad versus Australia and a tremendous IPL 2023, seems completely forgotten.
Without much patience shown with a developing 23-year-old, knives have been pulled out to diss at his current form after perhaps finding inconsistent bounce an obstacle to his pace-dominant game and range throughout the Caribbean trip.
Former India opening batter Aakash Chopra echoed the sentiments on the outside and took a dig at Gill after being touted to have emerged as the next “king” of Indian batsmanship since his incredible run during the IPL for Gujarat Titans (GT).
Gill blasted the opposition attacks through the tournament for the Titans and emerged as the tournament’s top run-getter with a whopping 890 runs in his 17 innings, averaging 59.30 while carrying a strike-rate of 157.80. The elegant right-hander produced three spectacular centuries and raised talks of transitioning from the young price of the Indian batting kingdom to being the reigning king.
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Chopra took a dig on the youngster along those lines, insisting lack of consistent runs for the past two months have rained on the cricketer’s parade and diminished his stocks.
“At this point in time, the problem is with Shubman Gill’s form. During the IPL, I read in many places that he is no longer the prince but the king,” Chopra said on his YouTube channel. “But after that, there was the WTC final, he didn’t score too many runs there, played two Test matches against the West Indies, didn’t score runs there.”
“Then he played three ODIs, where he scored one half-century and a score of 34. He has single-digit scores in all three T20Is. It seems like he hasn’t scored runs at all on this West Indies tour. I feel there is one thing with him for sure – when the pitches are slightly slow, he will find it difficult to get into rhythm,” he added.
