Gill and Sai now know how to run through gears while batting together, as shown rather emphatically in yesterday’s masterclass.
Gill and Sai have five gears they can shift to,” says Tom Moody.
IPL 2025 playoffs are being played by Gujarat Titans (GT). With nine victories from 12 games, they now lead the points table. Both the Orange Cap and Purple Cap tables are dominated by their players. Even if they are a strong “team” accomplishing all of this, the two opening batsmen are the ones making the most news. Obviously. B Only two hitters from the 10 teams have scored 600 runs or more this season: Sai Sudharsan and Shubman Gill. As stated by Tom Moody, “both of them have five gears they can shift to” is the reason they have been able to accomplish that.
Gill and Sai Sudharsan’s unbroken double-century stand in Delhi on Sunday night was only the most recent example of their ability to bat long, deep, and fast without appearing to do so.
Their best score of the season was 205 against the Delhi Capitals, although they have already amassed 839 runs together at an average of 76.27. They have erected century stands three times. In T20 cricket, that is enormous, particularly if they contribute to the team’s victory, as GT has done. It has appeared at times that the opposition bowlers simply lack the tactics necessary to exert pressure on them.
“I think the way they dovetail together as an opening pair, they seem to really understand each other’s game,” Moody said on ESPNcricinfo Time Out. “One seems to fall in behind the other if one’s really got off to a flier. So they cover each other and there seems to be a pattern in that throughout the season. And just their traditional strokeplay.”
“How do you build the pressure? By bowling dot balls. Those two are so good, not just in this game; if you see the other games also, where the pitches were a little tricky, they are so good [at] running between the wickets, that really makes their life easier,” Piyush Chawla said. “When you are bowling a good ball as a bowler, you look for a dot ball or a wicket. They turn that into a single. And when there is a ball to hit for a boundary, they are never missing those chances as well.
“I remember one game against KKR (Kolkata Knight Riders) when they played at Eden Gardens. It was a difficult pitch to bat on, but again Shubman Gill made that pitch look totally different, and when the other batters were batting, it looked like they were batting on a different surface. That’s the quality of these two.”
It’s not as though Sai Sudharsan and Gill don’t make great shots. This season, Gill has hit 54 fours and 23 sixes, while Sai Sudharsan has hit 68 and 20. Only Yashasvi Jaiswal of the Rajasthan Royals (RR) has hit more fours (55 to 54) than Gill this season, and Sai Sudharsan has hit more than anybody else. Only six batters have hit more sixes than Gill, who has hit 23.
However, as Chawla said, the combination hasn’t allowed too many balls to go unscored, which has greatly helped them. With 387 dot balls out of 1396 they have faced, GT has the lowest dot-ball percentage of any team in their hitting innings (27.72%). DC’s 31.36% is the second lowest.
“What it shows you is the class of that batting pair. They are proper batters that have the technique that can weather any storm but also… they have both developed this over time, they have learnt how to move through the gears,” Moody said. “They may have only had three gears in previous years, both of them have five gears they can shift to.”