India vs England: Shubman Gill can breathe sigh of relief with century but has to maintain consistency

He did it. He finally did it. Shubman Gill, India’s new-found number three batter in Tests finally got a moment to rejoice when he registered his third Test century on Day 3 of the second Test against England in Visakhapatnam on Sunday. After almost a year of not having had a 50-plus score in Tests, and given that he was under immense pressure coming into the series, Gill, for all his might, braved all his nerves to get to the century.

However, the celebrations were mute. There wasn’t much of a celebration when the 24-year-old got to his fifty, and only acknowledged the crowd mainly because his father was watching him from the stands.

And rightly so, it’s important that Gill doesn’t celebrate this knock too much. He cannot get complacent whatsoever. Of course, this knock would come as a relief for the youngster— his last Test century had come against Australia in Ahmedabad in March last year, the same match where he had surpassed the 50-run mark in Tests previously. Needless to say, this knock could not have come at a better time. At a time when Virat Kohli remains absent due to personal reasons, a hamstring injury ruling KL Rahul out, and Shreyas Iyer struggling for consistency, Gill’s knock came at the right time for Team India.

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Having said that, consistency is the keyword here. It will be paramount that Gill maintains this consistency in the forthcoming Tests, because, with just one good knock, nobody can determine if Gill has truly “roared back to form”. There are three more Tests remaining in the series and a maximum of six innings. Gill cannot rest on this century just yet, and must focus on proving to the opposition that this to was not just a one-off affair.

Prior to this, Gill only had scored 258 runs from six innings in Tests that took place between January 2023 and January 2024. Almost half of those runs came in the Ahmedabad Test against Australia alone. Since then, he has had several opportunities to prove himself but ended up falling short. His next best knock with the bat was a 55-ball 36 against South Africa in Cape Town in December. More often than not, Gill has been questioned by some, including Sunil Gavaskar, for his approach in Tests, with the batting legend saying that Gill had been batting in Tests a bit too aggressively.

“I think he is playing a bit too aggressively in Test cricket. There is a slight difference when you play Test cricket when compared to T20I and ODI cricket. The difference is in the ball. The red ball moves a little more than the white ball in the air and off the pitch as well. It bounces a little more too. He should keep that in mind,” Gavaskar had said on Star Sports in December.

Read | Gill pleased with century, but says India ‘could have done with a few more runs’

This time, however, it wasn’t the aggressive Gill that we witnessed on Sunday but a rather composed batter who knew that he had to anchor the innings. And that is exactly what he did. However, it cannot be said that all was well for Gill early on. The Punjab batter did have moments of luck, including an LBW off Tom Hartley’s ball that seemed plumb, only for a faint inside edge to save him.

Talking about aggression, Gill didn’t go all out right from the start. He bided his time initially, defending James Anderson’s deliveries sensibly and remained untroubled till the 17th over as far as England were concerned. From the last ball of the 16th over, Gill slowly began to change gears.

Against Shoaib Bashir, Gill went down the wicket and slammed over the bowlers’ head for a maximum, whereas he hit Hartley for consecutive boundaries in the 18th over. He continued getting these boundaries at regular intervals while looking to balance his innings with defensive techniques. However, for Gill, it was not just about that. It was also about rotating the strike with his partner, something that he had been lacking in his last few outings.

Gill was involved in 80-plus stands with both Iyer and Axar Patel, and one major takeaway from these two partnerships was the way Gill consistently rotated the strike with his partner. He regularly kept the scoreboard ticking by taking those ones and twos, and he did that without much fuss.

A timely ton