India vs England: Sanjay Manjrekar points out changes Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer must make to rediscover form

Sanjay Manjrekar has suggested changes that out-of-form Indian batters Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer need to make to their game to rediscover their form. Both Gill (34) and Iyer (27) got starts but failed to convert them into anything big in the first innings of the Visakhapatnam Test against England. The low scores for Gill and Iyer was the latest in a long streak of poor outing for both the batters.

Gill had registered scores of 2, 26, 36, 10, 23 and 0 in three Tests before the second Tests against England. Iyer’s scores read 31, 6, 0, 4*, 35 and 13.

Manjrekar said that Gill needs to make changes to his defence to make it more compact for the Test cricket.

“Shubman Gill, how does he react to his failures? He needs to do something about his defense if he wants to be the prolific run-getter in the team at the Test level, both against swing and spin,” Manjrekar told ESPNCricinfo.

“That’s a cause for worry and that’s something that won’t be solved easily. These are uncontrollable for the team management, and the selectors,” Manjrekar added.

Talking about Iyer, Manjrekar pointed out that while the middle-order likes to play aggressive cricket, he will need to find a way to play a more risk-free cricket.

“Shreyas Iyer seems to want to play the modern way, which is about hitting the way out of trouble, so be it. We saw the English batters take a safer approach to be aggressive,” he said.

“He’s got to find one because just lofting balls down the pitch or towards mid-wicket is a lot more risky than playing the reverse sweeps and the switch reverse sweeps,” Manjrekar added.

With Virat Kohli due to personal reasons and KL Rahul out injured, it’s imperative that Gill and Iyer quickly get back in form as England try to secure their first test series win in India in 12 years. Currently, the visitors are 1-0 ahead in the five-match Test series with a 28-run win at Hyderabad.