The out-of-touch opening batter showcased first signs of recovering to his best form with an encouraging knock in the Florida T20I against the West Indies.
Shubman Gill insists there wasn’t much going wrong with his game even when the scores didn’t come in the first set of three T20Is of the ongoing West Indies series.
The prodigiously talented Indian opener, who smashed a more befitting and classy knock of 77 off 47 in the team’s dominating nine-wicket win in Florida on Saturday (August 12), says he doesn’t believe there was any “mistake” holding him back.
Throughout the tour, spanning also the two Tests and three ODIs, Gill has found inconsistent speed and lift off the deck on Caribbean surfaces an issue with his outside leg-stump guard and late trigger across. The young right-hander had made just one previous fifty-plus score from his nine innings of the trip: a promising but a little scratchy 85 in the ODI series decider in Tarouba.
That changed when stepped on the American shores. Shubman Gill relished the truer pace and bounce off the pitch to regain his best flow at the crease. The 23-year-old hammered the West Indies attack in a commanding opening partnership with the equally bright Yashavi Jaiswal to make the chase of 178 a no-contest.
Speaking to teammate Arshdeep Singh in a special interview on BCCI.tv, Shubman Gill opened up on his struggles for the first three T20Is of the series and pressed home he felt there wasn’t much overly going wrong with his game and execution in the middle.
Gill could muster scores of just 3,7 and 6 in Trinidad and Guyana but personally thought he was the right track and the runs are imminent with the mighty talented 23-year-old.
“In the first three matches, I could not even score 10, today (the) wicket was a bit better, so wanted to capitalise. Then when I got a good start, we just wanted to finish it,” Gill told Arshdeep in their chat.
“T20 format is like that. When you have 3-4 matches where a good shot is caught by the fielder, and you are eyeing quick runs, you don’t have time to think much. It’s important to go to your basics. You just look at what your template was when you were consistently scoring runs.”
“You have to identify whether you are making any mistake. I felt I wasn’t making a mistake in any of the three matches. But I couldn’t convert my starts,” he added.
India would hope Gill carries the newfound momentum forward to the T20I series decider in Florida on Sunday (August 13) and revive his best mojo in the build-up to the Asia Cup, which acts as a prelude to the 2023 World Cup, where he will be key.
