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.
Then Gill decelerated, partly because Jos Buttler got his act going after early wobbles including a dropped catch.
It’s the nature and wisdom of Gill. He is unlike his friend Abhishek Sharma who looks to hit a higher gear every ball and most of the other postmodern buccaneering openers. He weighs the situation, sizes up the attack, and then processes the most failsafe method forward. It’s not that his car does not run on higher gears, but he chooses the ones that suit the road.
Home-raised band
A lanky seamer that extracts bounce and outward seam movement to the right-hander; a tearaway who hustles destructive bat-wielders; a wizened seam artiste bursting with wit and wisdom. Prasidh Krishna, Ashok Sharma and Mohammed Siraj from an indomitable domestic fast-bowling powerhouse twisted the knife on LSG’s batsmen with bloodless deception.
Prasidh Krishna has been a bowler reborn this edition, his gifts allying with discipline and precision as it scarcely had before. He pounded the hard length patch, bending the ball inwards and tearing it away from right-handers at brisk pace. Aiden Markram was warned straightaway with a beast that cut him into half. He steadily dragged him to the off-side and then slipped in a short ball outside the off-stump that rushed him into a miscued pull.