Shubman Gill is having a dream year with the bat. He’s the leading international run-scorer in 2023 with 1275 runs at an average of 47 having notched up 5 centuries- the most for any men’s batsman this year – including a double hundred, to go with 3 fifties.
Yet, critics and trollers went after him after he had a few low scores on the ongoing West Indies tour where the pitches in West Indies have been challenging for batting, but he also scored 85 runs in the third ODI in Tarouba.
Things went a bit downhill for Shubman Gill in the first 3 T20Is where he managed scores of 3,7 and 6, and the trollers sprung up with the “Ahmedabad pitch” jibe, suggesting that Gill gets found out and struggles on pitches that are not as batting friendly as that in Ahmedabad. He had a sensational IPL 2023 season, where he topped the charts, with over half of his runs coming in Ahmedabad along with a century in Bangalore.
I wasn’t making a mistake: Shubman Gill
The 23-year-old bounced back from those three low scores and smashed a match-winning knock of 77 runs in 47 balls with the help of 3 fours and 5 sixes in the 4th T20I on Saturday in Florida, helping India chase down the target of 179 with ease along with Yashasvi Jaiswal’s stunning assault of 84*(51).
After India secured a thumping win by 9 wickets in Florid, levelling the series 2-2, Shubman Gill broke his silence over those three low scores. He said he wasn’t making any glaring mistakes earlier.
“It’s important to go to your basics. 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,” the right-handed opener said in a video for the BCCI.
“T20 format is like that. When you have 3-4 matches where a good shot is caught by the fielder, and you have to eye at making quick runs, you don’t have time to think much. You just look at what your template was when you were consistently scoring runs.”
The series now has been pushed into a decider with India levelling it from 2-0 to 2-2. The decider will be also played in Florida on Sunday.
