BRISBANE: For someone who rarely lets off any emotion while addressing the media, Shubman Gill did not hide his happiness when he was asked about the feeling of coming back to the Gabba in the lead-up to the third Test between India and Australia. He was visibly delighted while talking about his previous visit to the venue, and with good reason.
It was the game that announced his arrival as a Test batter on the global stage. In only his third week as a Test cricketer, Gill produced a scintillating 91 which was crucial in setting up the game and series for Rishabh Pant here.
While Gill felt nostalgic and very happy about coming back to the venue, things did not go down as well as he would have liked.
In fact, it hasn’t been whenever he travels outside of Asia. That 91 against Australia in the series decider at the Gabba in January 2021 should have been the launchpad on which Gill’s dominance as a Test batter was built. Instead, three years on, it feels more like an aberration.
Now, it might seem harsh, but one look at the numbers will tell the full story. While Gill’s average of 35.76 after 31 Tests might be sub-par - Virat Kohli averaged 43.08 after 30 Tests - there seems to be a bigger concern.
Away from home, Gill’s numbers drop further down to 28.45 in 14 games and take Bangladesh out, it is 26.3 in 12 Tests.
In 22 innings outside of Asia, Gill has just two fifties, including the ones he hit in Sydney and Brisbane three years ago. His next high score is the 45 he made in Melbourne on Test debut in December 2020. Gill hasn’t been able to score over 40 in a Test innings outside the subcontinent since then despite playing in England, West Indies, South Africa and Australia paints the picture.
To an extent, he knows it too. This is why, Gill, who made his debut as an opener, opted to move down to No 3 at the start of the this year.
Knowing that there is no doubt in potential, the selectors and team management were happy to accommodate him at No 3 while moving on from Cheteshwar Pujara. And to be fair to Gill, he had repaid the faith with three centuries and as many fifties before arriving on the Australian shores.
In this tour, he was expected to play the role of his predecessor Pujara but in his own way. Gill, however, has visibly struggled.
In Adelaide, despite starting well, he fell to the incoming delivery from Scott Boland before getting cleaned up by a Mitchell Starc special in the second innings. Gill, ahead of Brisbane Test, had said that it was one-off and the pink ball poses its own challenges.
“I think I faltered in the first innings around because of what happened on the other end (wickets tumbling). I kind of took that on me and there was a period where I faced one ball in like four overs and then the next ball that I faced I kind of missed a straight ball, a fuller ball, but these are the challenges that you face while playing a Test match,” Gill had explained.
While it made sense in hindsight, Gill might not have any such reasoning for his dismissal in Brisbane first innings. Having faced just two deliveries, Gill chased down a full delivery from Starc with his hands only to edge it towards gully, where Mitch Marsh took a diving catch. Another failure away from home continued.
While it was an individual failure and struggle, Gill’s dismissal opened the floodgates. Kohli and Pant fell shortly after and India were left catching up from behind. If not for KL Rahul and Ravindra Jadeja’s recovery and the constant rain intervention, India might just have conceded lead in Brisbane.
As the caravan moves to Melbourne, the venue where Gill made his Test debut and has his only 40-plus score outside Asia (apart from the two fifties, that is), the Indian No 3 might want to take a leaf out of his teammate, KL Rahul's book.
Through the series, Rahul has been by and large the best batter and the key to it has been leaving the balls outside off-stump. Gill, while an excellent player of pace and bounce, have had trouble with the incoming delivery in the past. He also has not really mastered the art of leaving balls, something that is key to succeeding in the top-order.
Rahul, in Brisbane, spoke about how he replicated what Australia did in terms of leaving balls in the first 30 overs.
”We've seen even in Adelaide in the night when Nathan McSweeney and Marnus Labuschagne played really well in those 10-15 overs. They just kept leaving balls of a good length. That's a good thing about playing here in Australia. If you get used to the pace and bounce, you can trust the bounce and you can leave balls on bounce. And that's something that they showed us in the last game and they did that really well. So, for me, it's as important,” Rahul had said.
It is something that Gill would want to emulate, not just for his own sake but for the team as well. Him spending time in the middle will allow the likes of Kohli and Pant to come in much later and take on the game against the softer ball.
Pujara doing that was key to India winning consecutive Test series. For someone who’s being looked at as a captaincy prospect and the next superstar, Gill will have to do a lot more to get there. The first step would be spending time in the middle at the Melbourne Cricket Ground come Boxing Day.