Just as the clock was ticking on Shubman Gill’s spot in the Test team, he rode his luck in the early exchanges and put India in a commanding position with a timely century on the third day of the second Test at the Dr. Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium in Visakhapatnam on Sunday.
Chasing a record 399, England faces an uphill task after Ravichandran Ashwin sent Ben Duckett back towards Stumps following Jasprit Bumrah’s probing opening spell. With Joe Root’s availability with the bat still under doubt due to an injury to his finger, England’s troubles may have compounded.
However, it was India that was in a spot of bother in the morning before Gill turned the tables.
With James Anderson, who continues to torment the opposition despite his age and conditions, excising openers Rohit Sharma and Yashasvi Jaiswal with a masterclass in new-ball bowling, another muddled effort with the bat in the second innings threatened to put India at the mercy of ‘Bazball’.
Gill was tested too, first by Tom Hartley and then Anderson, as the gaping technical chinks in his armour seemed to get the better of his inherent talent. A free-flowing stroke-maker, Gill is troubled when he pre-empts while defending. He thrust his foot forward to defend against Hartley, but the ball didn’t turn as much as he anticipated, and it thudded into his front pad. If not for a faint inside edge, which even he wasn’t sure of, Gill would be trudging back to the dugout for four.
In the following over, he came too far across to defend an Anderson delivery that pitched outside off and nipped back in. ‘Umpire’s call’ was his saving grace on this occasion.
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After smacking Shoaib Bashir for a six down the ground, Gill was caught defending off the front-foot with hard hands, and this time Hartley got the ball to turn away, take the outside edge but the slip fielder was standing too wide. He got a boundary off that ball, and the following one too as Hartley drifting one down the leg-side.
The inexperience of England’s spinners showed as they missed their lengths, allowing Gill and Shreyas Iyer to overcome a nervy first hour of play and put 81 runs for the third wicket. In an inexplicable departure from his penchant for forcing the issue, Ben Stokes spread the field, allowing the duo to rotate strike and settle in.
Gill didn’t hold back against any indiscretion in length, greeting Rehan Ahmed into the attack with two fours – on either side of point – as the leg-spinner pitched it short. He reached his fifty off 60 balls with two more boundaries off Rehan’s third over of the day, using his feet to get to the pitch of the ball and then driving the full length through cover.
It took Stokes’ other-worldly athleticism to end the stand, as Iyer sliced one high in the air after giving Hartley the charge. The English skipper steamed in from mid-off towards the long-off boundary and snaffled it diving in front, leaving the partisan crowd torn between stunned appreciation and disappointment.
Rajat Patidar couldn’t make his debut memorable, getting an under-edge to the ‘keeper after the ball kept low, adding five runs to his 32 in the first innings.
After lunch, Gill took a shine to Rehan, who continued to overpitch, with a six and a couple of fours off consecutive deliveries, while Axar Patel added to the momentum with two fours off Anderson.
Gill swept Bashir to move to 94 after a jittery passage in the late eighties. There were no theatrics after Gill nudged one to square-leg for a single and got to his 132-ball ton. As he ambled past the crease at the non-striker’s end, there was relief, rather than jubilation, written on Gill’s face as he ended his 12-innings-long century-drought, during which the best he had managed was 36.
He lost focus soon after, getting some glove on the reverse-sweep after Stokes had starved him of run-scoring options on the leg-side by placing a short mid-on, short midwicket and short square-leg.
India’s innings unraveled thereafter, with its last five wickets falling for 35 runs. Axar’s resilient 45 ended when another one of Rehan’s deliveries kept low. K.S. Bharat pulled a long hop straight to mid-on while Kuldeep Yadav got a top edge while sweeping.
While Ashwin’s 29-run rearguard took the lead closer to 400, his denying Bumrah singles with eight fielders manning the boundary ropes may have cost the team a few runs.
Earlier, in the second over of the day, Anderson flattened Rohit’s off-stump with one that deviated away off the seam after pitching on middle and off. Jaiswal couldn’t replicate his restraint against the 41-year-old from the first innings and paid the price with an outside edge while driving one that was going away with the angle.
Gill’s heroics brought India back in the saddle from there, and, with England needing 332 with nine wickets in hand in conditions where no visiting team has touched the 300-run mark in the fourth innings, probably in the driver’s seat too.
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