Shubman Gill’s sluggish knock in IND vs AUS 4th T20I raises questions over Samson & Jaiswal snub

Shubman Gill’s struggles in 4th T20I

Although Gill managed to get his highest score of the Australia white-ball tour, the innings has actually done more harm than good. The decision to bring Gill back into the T20I was a questionable one to begin with. The management had to break Abhishek Sharma and Samson’s successful opening partnership.

Since returning, Gill has crossed the 30-run mark just twice and has yet to score a fifty. His strike rate hasn’t been impressive either. But at the Carrara Oval in Queensland, Gill was perhaps at his worst. On a pitch where batting wasn’t easy, he struggled big time.

India’s top three couldn’t get going at all as the ball wasn’t coming off the bat. Abhishek ended up scoring 28 from 21. Shivam Dube did worse, scoring 22 from 18. But Gill’s knock was atrocious. He played 1/3 of the total balls, 39, and scored just 46 runs. He struggled against pacers and even spinners.

India’s top 3 in Queensland

Lack of intent

But the biggest was intent. More often than not, Gill was looking to rotate the strike instead of putting his foot on the paddle. When Abhishek retired, he should have started to accelerate, but he didn’t. When Dube got out and captain Suryakumar Yadav came in, he tried to get going, but it didn’t happen.

It wasn’t that Gill played a bad knock; that wasn’t the issue. There are times when batters can’t get going. The issue with Gill was intent. He wasn’t going hard enough. In the current T20I setup, you have such explosive batters in the team and others waiting for a turn.

You can’t replace someone like Samson and bench Jaiswal for the replacement to knock it around and hope to recover at the backend. India has seen where that road leads. The 2021 and 2022 editions of the T20 World Cup were lost because of that approach. Either Gill has to start attacking more, or India has to make way for someone else.