Can Shubman Gill Do it?
India's new captain is tasked with reinventing his game for English conditions - Ben Jones takes a look at the template.
Changes in Test captaincy are markers of eras, the end of one project and the start of another. They are a chance to reflect on successes and failures, line-up some new ones, and move forward with fresh minds and a renewed sense of purpose. In theory.
For India, this has been an imperfect handover. Former leader Rohit Sharma departed off-stage, his final act being to drop himself for the crucial final Test against Australia in January. No build-up or lead-in, no waving goodbye to thankful crowds, just a stage a direction. Rohit Sharma exits; Shubman Gill enters.
What Gill is entering is not quite clear. The tourists are visibly in transition. Gautam Gambhir inherited, from Rahul Dravid, a team which won Tests relentlessly, particularly on Indian soil. While there have been highlights over the last 12 months - an improbable win over Bangladesh in double-quick time, numerous Jasprit Bumrah heroics - that side has lost its lustre, and their long-held unbeaten record at home with it. The Border-Gavaskar was a far more one-sided affair than the 3-1 scoreline suggests, and right now, this is a team lacking identity beyond the star quality of their attack leader, and in need of direction from its captain. Over to you, Shubman.
As a batter it’s coming at a good time for him. 2024 was Gill’s breakthrough year as a Test player, averaging 43 with three centuries. Only the prodigal Yashasvi Jaiswal scored more runs for India last year, a reflection of their wider batting issues but also of Gill’s rising stock. Depending on who you ask, he was either dropped, rested, rotated or simply ‘not preferred’ for the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne, but that speaks more to the confusion around strategy and selection in the Indian camp than to his own ability. Gill is ready to go big.
It’s all in line with what we’ve seen with the elevation of other Indian leaders of a similar profile. When Virat Kohli first took the captaincy back in 2014 (on a temporary basis, replacing the injured MS Dhoni), he was 26 years old having played 29 Tests, averaging 39 with the bat. Gill is a touch younger (25) but has played a handful more Tests (32), and while his average (35) is lower than Kohli’s, it’s comparable.
Similarly, while gaining the captaincy coincided with Kohli delivering one of the great overseas tours of Australia (692 runs in four Tests), that was actually the first time he had properly dominated away from home. Outside of Asia, he had just under 1,000 runs to his name at an average of only 33. Ditto, Gill: 13 Tests outside of Asia, 559 runs, averaging 25.
India’s new captain has five Test tons, all in Asia, and four of them in India; away from his home continent he’s managed two fifties, and precious little else. It’s a familiar blot for young batters, struggling to find their feet overseas, but it’s a blot nonetheless.
The cause of Gill’s poor record outside of Asia is not surprising. 19 of his 22 dismissals in England, South Africa, West Indies and Australia have come against seamers, averaging 26 runs-per-dismissal against them.
It’s not been the pace and bounce of foreign pitches which have cooked him though. Against pace outside Asia, Gill has dominated the short ball, averaging 102 against deliveries pitching 8m or further from his stumps. The problem has been against everything else: a poor record against full balls (averaging 28), a diabolical one against good lengths (averaging just 9). His dismissal rate to those good length deliveries (36) is comparable only to tailenders. The foundation of any Test innings is an ability to repel good deliveries, and at the moment, Gill can’t do that often enough.
There are positives among the wreckage. He has a brilliant record against away swing in these Tests, averaging over 100, perhaps the reach afforded him by his height and backlift allowing him to go calmly with the movement, staying in control for longer than other batters.
However, to bring him back down to earth, Gill has a fatal allergy to the ball coming back into him: against inswing, he averages just 19. England fans will think back to James Anderson’s reverse-swing slicing through Gill’s defence in Chennai, but there are plenty of other examples.
When it comes to seam movement he struggles regardless of direction, but his average against away movement (23) is still higher than when the ball is coming back in (17). For a player of his elegance and class, Gill isn’t taking up many minutes of the bowlers meeting. Bring it back in, boys.
And so, in preparation for this summer’s five Test series against England, pessimism has largely been the order of the day for Indian fans. More so than other teams existing at a lower emotional temperature, Indian cricket is metonymic, defined by the quality and qualities of its leader. When that leader seems vulnerable, unsuited to the challenge ahead, conversation and speculation follows.
However - and it’s not a sentence we associate with Indian cricket, but let’s try it - perspective is important here. In the last decade, there are only 12 instances of a batter coming to England over a longer Test series (four or more games) and averaging over 40, and crucially, only two of them - Marnus Labuschagne and Misbah-ul-Haq, 42 years old at the time - have done it on their first visit. Gill is far from the first high-profile batter to tour England and struggle with the unique challenges that cricket here can bring.
The real question is: how can Gill be better this time?
If he is in need of a template, he needn’t look far. In 2014, Virat Kohli came to England, and bombed: 134 runs in five Tests, his average in the teens. Four years later, he returned in a new form: leaner, steelier, more productive. He dramatically changed his stance in a number of ways, and his scoring areas moved radically. On that first tour, 34% of Kohli’s runs against pace came in the classical straight ‘v’ down the ground - in 2018, it was just 7%. Kohli returned to England and played squarer, with more than half of his runs coming through point and cover.
In a Sky Cricket masterclass during the 2022 summer, Kumar Sangakkara - who averaged 85 on his final tour of England - explained some principles behind playing the swinging ball in these conditions. His primary focus was to “avoid playing straight lines […] when there is swing, if you’re trying to hit back straight, you’re actually hitting across the line.” The simple physics are hard to deny.
For Kohli it wasn’t only where the shots were being played, but where they were played from; just as importantly as playing squarer, he batted well out of his crease. While still aiming to play the ball late, under his eyes, Kohli’s impact point in 2018 (2.33m) was almost half a metre further down the track than before (1.86m), substantially reducing the window for the ball to swing. That reduced window brought control: his average against swinging deliveries increased to an incredible degree, from 11 to 173.
There are seeds of this approach already there in Gill’s game. Playing in England, his interception point has been 2.1m from his stumps, the furthest down for any country he’s played in. Attempting to “smother” the swing and seam may not have born fruit so far, but the logic is sound, and he is giving himself a chance to succeed.
The more obvious need for a change in tack is around those scoring areas. In his three Tests on UK soil, Gill has scored 30% of his runs down the ground. It’s probably no coincidence that Gill’s best record overseas is in Australia, where the steep bounce brings his short ball strength into play, and where playing straight is a virtue.
Equally, it isn’t a coincidence that he’s struggled so far in England, where the bounce is more neutral, the sideways movement more insistent. Pitches here are flatter than they used to be, but swing and seam remain the primary weapons for bowlers on these shores. Looking to dominate down the ground may work for Gill if he’s at the top of his game, but it’s tough to sustain.
In that same masterclass, Sangakkara, as he often will, throws in a broader bit of wisdom: "If you don't change, you become irrelevant". Perhaps that is actually the key lesson for Gill. Sangakkara averaged 21 the first time he came to here. Kohli had 2014. The difference between greats like them and lesser players is not only their techniques, but the fact that they are willing to tinker and trial, to problem solve. Because while elbows and angles matter a hell of a lot in red ball batting, they aren’t everything. Ultimately, any given technical change on any given day could be the final piece in the puzzle, but the willingness to change itself is the first step.