The prospects of Shubman Gill’s participation in the blockbuster India-Pakistan clash in Ahmedabad would appear to have substantially increased with captain Rohit Sharma giving his regular opening partner a ‘99% chance’ of playing in the game.
Gill has been laid low by dengue fever and missed India’s first two games of the World Cup. In fact, he didn’t travel from Chennai to Delhi for the second match and instead flew to Ahmedabad on Thursday when he had an individual net session two days out from the game.
He joined the rest of the India squad at practice on the eve of the game and partook in a warm-up foot net game before proceeding to outdoor nets facility. After a few knocks to get the session going, he was bowled to by Mohammed Shami, Ravichandran Ashwin as well as the team’s throwdown specialists. The 24-year-old wasn’t particularly troubled by the spinners but appeared scratchy against pace, even after he moved to take pacy throwdowns from left-arm slinger Nuwan Seneviratne and Dayananda.
Gill’s first session lasted close to 40 minutes at the end of which he appeared exhausted. He walked out of the net and plonked himself on the grass with a bottle of water and needed to be checked on by Rahul Dravid and Vikram Rathour. He attempted to resume batting a little later against a pair of left-arm orthodox net bowlers but seemed dozy with his movements, even summoning another net bowler to stand behind the stumps and retrieve balls that he played and missed or left alone. This second session lasted all of five minutes before Gill pulled the plug on it and trudged away.
He did re-emerge at the main stadium and participated in a slip-catching drill with fielding coach T. Dilip, where he seemed much more mobile than he had at the end of his net session. A diving stop at the end of that short stint even earned him pats on the back from the coach and close friend Ishan Kishan, who was overlooking this drill. Incidentally, the team’s incumbent opener, Kishan, didn’t bat in the nets on the eve of the match.
There are many reasons for India to want Gill back in the XI, not least his takedown of Shaheen Afridi in the last game between these two sides in Colombo. Gill enjoys a formidable record playing at the Narendra Modi Stadium for home franchise Gujarat Titans. In the most recent season of the IPL, he hit 572 runs from nine games including two hundreds and three fifties and an excellent strike-rate 172.81.
It is expected that a final call on his participation will still be made closer to the match and India will be wary of rushing him back too soon with two-third’s of their league games still to be played after this clash.
