When watching a batter, what do you notice? swing of
the bat? eyes and hands? Changing the body’s weight? the way the shot was made?
The batter’s subsequent response?
Sometimes it’s best to keep an eye on your feet with
Shubman Gill. like it was on Friday night at the men’s Asia Cup. His feet were
a major factor as well as everything else.
In the first innings, Shakib Al Hasan seemed to bat on
a different pitch than the other batters did, but Gill took it to a new level,
or pitch, if you will, in the second innings.
Gill was on 57 when Suryakumar Yadav left the game at
94 for 4. At that point, he had already smashed six fours and one six. Mahedi
Hasan’s six over deep midwicket had brought up his half-century. After seeing
KL Rahul miss a similar hit during the offspinner’s previous over, this was the
decision.
Gill moved in front of Mustafizur Rahman and played a
cover drive. Then, when one might have anticipated another front-foot drive, he
moved back and hammered through backward point off a fullish ball that was
angling away. He frequently stepped deep in the crease to cut the short or
length balls when facing spinners, which made them pitch the ball up. When they
did, he stretched out to walk along the carpet and to the ball.
“On slow wickets, there are a lot of dot balls.
Our chat as a batting group is to reduce dot balls and rotate strike,”
Gill said later in the press conference, his 121 in 133 balls having gone in
vain. “The track was slow and was taking turn, so taking singles is not
easy, especially for new batters. The talk was about playing it late and close
to the body.
“On slow wickets, more runs are scored square of
the wicket and less down the ground. So, the aim was to do that.”
With the asking rate climbing to over nine for the
final seven overs, Gill perished playing one shot too many. He slog-swept
Mahedi over cow corner before holing out to long-off the next ball.
“There’s so much adrenaline when you are batting,
sometimes you miscalculate,” Gill said. “That was a miscalculation on
my side. When you got out, you saw there was a lot of time left. If I had
batted a bit normally or not that aggressively, we should have been able to get
over the line. Fortunately, this was not the final for us. These are the kind
of learnings that as a batsman you want to take and move forward.”