Old-fashioned Shubman Gill and his band of home-raised fast-bowling trio star in GT’s cruise over LSG
The understated fast-bowling trio of Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna and Ashok Sharma harassed and bossed Rishabh Pant and Co, restricting them to a middling 164, before Shubman Gill expertly jockeyed the chase and Jos Buttler flicked on the afterburners. The emphatic nature of their second successive win portends a resurgence.
Old-fashioned Gill
The switch from a rickety vintage car to a warp-speed race car was both swift and seamless. Shubman Gill looked ragged and rusty in the first 13 balls he faced. He survived a tough catch, tried to manufacture strokes and failed, drove crisply but straight into the fielders’ hands. But when he seemed like a blow away from crumbling to the mat, he dragged himself from the ropes and showered his adversaries with blows for a 56 off 41.
It was Mohammed Shami’s third over. The first two had bled only 10. A double and dot later, Shami erred on the leg-side and Gill gleefully flicked it through the vacant fine-leg region. Something stirred, a routine stroke filled him with belief. The next ball, he thrust his front-foot and drove him aerially over long-off. There was not much room to free his arms, it was a length ball on off-stump, but the bat-swing was so fluid that he generated ample power to clear the mid-off fielder. Energised, he crashed him through covers, on the rise and on the toes. The kind of strokes that warms eyes in the onslaught of hideous hacks and heaves. A dishevelled Shami slipped one into Gill’s body, whereupon the dexterous wrists harnessed the ball through midwicket. From 11 off 13, Gill bloomed to 37 off 21 balls after he pummelled George Linde for his next four.