Shubman Gill’s pursuit of perfection: How Indian captain put in serious hours to prepare for English Test and came out trumps

It was about a month before he was to take the most important flight of his life to Heathrow, London, for his first assignment as India’s Test captain at 25. On one gloomy day in Chandigarh before Shubman Gill came to England, England came to Shubman Gill.

It was IPL time, he was leading the Gujarat Titans and having nets on what seemed like a ‘dicey’ pitch – some balls flying towards his face, others darting at his ribs. Shubman would stop training, dump the white balls back in the kit bag, and ask for a shiny red new one, the kind used for Test matches. Even while playing IPL, Shubman wasn’t missing a chance to be England-ready.

Gujarat Titans’ assistant coach Naeem Amin is based out of London, and he was there to witness Shubman’s quick ball-switch. “And the bit that you will find interesting was him keen to practice just against a new ball. As soon as the new ball would become a little bit old, he’d change it for another new ball,” says Amin. As India’s new Test No.4, Shubman knew that after facing the white-ball on flat tracks, he had to deal with the swinging-seaming red cherry in England.

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Amin also talks about the young skipper’s hunger to learn and the desire to improve. “His appetite always puts cricket first, and in that aspect, he is second to none. When Kane Williamson (former New Zealand captain and world’s leading modern-day batsman) was in our team (GT), he was asking him about his thoughts all the time. ‘How would you go about this or that? Why are you doing this drill? How does it benefit you?’.”

Shubman Gill regularly picked the treasure trove that is Kane Williamson’s brain while the pair shared a dressing room in the IPL playing for Gujarat Titans. (Photo credit: Gujarat Titans) Shubman Gill regularly picked the treasure trove that is Kane Williamson’s brain while the pair shared a dressing room in the IPL playing for Gujarat Titans. (Photo credit: Gujarat Titans)

England and New Zealand are miles apart, but on the cricketing map of conditions and pitches, they aren’t that different. Williamson is in England playing county cricket these days, and turned up for the Lord’s Test to find his one-time IPL teammate in the middle of the form of his life. He was pretty happy with what he saw.

The pursuit of batting perfection has been Shubman’s life goal since his wonder years in Punjab’s border town of Fazilka. His father, a landed farmer, would pay kids in the neighbourhood Rs 100 to bowl at his son all day. When in his teens, Shubman knew that he could go back to tractors, fields and the family agriculture income, if cricket didn’t work out. Like many others around him, the batting prodigy didn’t lose sleep over the dilemma of academics or a career option. He would get up fresh with only cricket on his mind.

Shubman would follow a punishing schedule, all through his Under-16 and Under-19 days, bat close to 6 to 8 hours every day. A typical day for him in Chandigarh, where he and his father moved from their village, would be about 3 to 4 hours of batting in the morning, a quick Amritsari lunch of patti or chhola kulcha, and again 3 to 4 hours of batting. Even when he made it to the Indian team, he was among the batsmen who batted the most at the nets.

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“I want my body to take control of my mind … Not my mind taking control of me, seeding inside me self-doubts or getting carried away. Because I have practised so much for so many years, I want my body to take control of my mind. Let the muscle memory kick in. That’s my challenge: use the mind to tell itself to stay quiet,” he once told The Indian Express.

A teenaged Shubman Gill at PCA Stadium in Mohali in March 2015. Shubman followed a punishing schedule all through his Under-16 and Under-19 days, batting close to 6 to 8 hours every day. (Express photo by Jaipal Singh) A teenaged Shubman Gill at PCA Stadium in Mohali in March 2015. Shubman followed a punishing schedule all through his Under-16 and Under-19 days, batting close to 6 to 8 hours every day. (Express photo by Jaipal Singh)

In England at the age 25, Shubman seemed to have achieved that batting nirvana. India’s batting coach Sitanshu Kotak has been watching him closely for the past several months, and he could notice a change.

“From the Australia series to this series, I have seen his thought process and the way he batted. It is little different from what he has done in Australia … I would give a lot of credit to him for deciding what he wants to play, when he does not … Every batter, at some stage of their life, thinks and changes the way they bat in Test cricket. And Shubman seemed to be doing that brilliantly in this England series,” Kotak said.

Before this series, Shubman’s highest Test score was his 128 against Australia in 2023. As if he was given a Midas touch along with the captain’s armband, everything that he touched in England has turned to gold. Between June 20 to July 6 – his fortnight of fortitude from the first to the third Test – Shubman registered three higher scores: 147, 269, 161. This was like the Swedish pole-vaulter Mondo Duplantis clearing new heights every other day, raising the bar at will.

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It was in Birmingham that Shubman would find his Bodhi Tree, where he found enlightenment. In England, his 267 is being hailed as the most perfect knock he’s ever played. Data shows that epic innings had a false shot percentage of 3.5 – that’s the least for any innings in England since this statistic came into existence 20 years back.

Since geniuses like Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Pointing, Rahul Dravid, Virat Kohli are on the list below Shubman, the Birmingham innings is worthy to be framed in India’s batting Hall of Fame. The near-perfect 267 was the outcome of his long penance, after mulling over many dismissals. It lifted him to a higher level, elevated him to the spiritual state where “the body controls the mind” and the “mind tells itself to stay quiet.”

Since geniuses like Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Pointing, Rahul Dravid, Virat Kohli are on the list below Shubman, the Birmingham innings is worthy to be framed in India’s batting Hall of Fame. (AP Photo) Since geniuses like Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Pointing, Rahul Dravid, Virat Kohli are on the list below Shubman, the Birmingham innings is worthy to be framed in India’s batting Hall of Fame. (AP Photo)

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England isn’t an easy place to play cricket. In summer, the days are long; for cricketers, they are longer. They can suck the energy out of you, the weather can be murky, it can make you gloomy. This time, during the day, there was heat too.

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Consider the schedule of an Indian cricketer during the Lord’s Test to understand this. The day would start at 6 am to be on the team bus that would start at 8 am. The match timing would be 11 am to 6.30 pm. By the time the team settles on the bus for the journey back to the team hotel, after press conferences and interviews, it would be 7.30 p.m.

From Lord’s to St James Court, where the team stayed, was easily a one and half hour long journey on the team bus, negotiating London’s notorious traffic. After that the players would have a meal, some me-time and then hit the bed. Within hours, the alarm would go off once again. The schedule would be more or less the same for 25 days, plus there was the pressure of performance and fear of failure to deal with.

For Gautam Gambhir, Shubman’s biggest achievement as a first-time skipper was to remain unfazed all through this very demanding tour. “This England team challenges a captain much more than Australia. They have many batsmen who can just run away with the game, and this puts pressure on the captain when the team is fielding. But not once has he looked shattered or lost,” he says.

For Gautam Gambhir, Shubman’s biggest achievement as a first-time skipper was to remain unfazed all through this very demanding tour. (AP Photo) For Gautam Gambhir, Shubman’s biggest achievement as a first-time skipper was to remain unfazed all through this very demanding tour. (AP Photo)

In Australia, there’s just one Travis Head in the Test team who can mentally disintegrate an opposition captain and make the fielding side rudderless. In England, Bazballers are crawling out of the dressing room ever so frequently. It starts with openers Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett, the batting buccaneers who can brain freeze the best.

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Down the batting line-up, there is Harry Brook, Jamie Smith, and Ben Stokes – all three with swinging bats that can rattle any captain. The run machine Joe Root, with his solidity, seems to loom as a fulcrum. There have been occasions when Shubman has looked clueless, when he seemed to have lost the grip on the game but the team didn’t give up.

As was the case at The Oval when Brook and Root seemed to have the game in their pocket, India kept on coming back at them. And when they got a toe-hold in the door, they barged in as a commando unit on a covert operation.

But as a member of the tour said, this series has been one of learning for the young skipper. “See the way Ben Stokes leads his team, he has a few fielding templates, or call them plans, to get wickets. He keeps his fielders moving around. Suddenly, there would be a leg-side trap, next the off-side would have fielders in funky positions. Shubman needs to find his own templates and plan. He is young, he is hungry, he will learn,” a team official says.

Gujarat Titans coach Amin gives an example of Shubman’s thinking of a course correction as soon as he gets out. “He is not the kind you will say I could have done this or that. After he has made a mistake as a batsman and got out, he has already dissected it on his walk back to the dugout. This is how quickly he realizes what he needs to do. There are times when there might be video analysis going on for another batter. He’s keen to listen in, just in case he can upskill 0.5%,” he says.

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In the first Test in Leeds, he got out playing a reckless shot when on 147. It would have helped if he had stayed on longer. On the eve of the next Test, he would take the blame, promise to do better and an astonishing atonement waited for him. He would score a double hundred in the next innings. What was that compelling reason for the improved performance?

“Sometimes, especially when you are the captain, I think you need to lead by example so that whenever there is another player in that situation, you can command that player,” the team official said. This was a captain subtly asserting himself; this was a skipper earning the right to be the “commander.” Former England captain Nasser Hussain, who had noted during the first Test that Gill “lacked aura” would reassess his verdict at the end of the second Test: “He (Gill) is not going to be a Kohli-type character. He’s got a low heartbeat, but that can help. Look at this crowd here today. Look at all of India watching on. You may need someone just to calm the team.”

As for Gambhir, he hasn’t been over-interfering in the proceedings on the field. For long periods of stand-offs where wickets have been hard to come by, the captain has been changing fields, bowlers, and tactics without any obvious prompt from the dressing room. When Shubman is batting, the substitutes haven’t randomly run on the field with gloves, or when the team is fielding, carrying unasked-for water bottles.

Shubman does his thing, the way he likes. He does have counsel available on the field. Vice-captain Pant, seniors KL Rahul, Ravindra Jadeja, Jasprit Bumrah, and even Mohammed Siraj, to chip in – when asked for and even offer unsolicited advice. As the pundits from the commentators box, especially while assessing the new captain during the first Test have said “Shubman is running the team by committee.”

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For long periods of stand-offs where wickets have been hard to come by, Gill has been changing fields, bowlers, and tactics without any obvious prompt from the dressing room. (AP Photo) For long periods of stand-offs where wickets have been hard to come by, Gill has been changing fields, bowlers, and tactics without any obvious prompt from the dressing room. (AP Photo)

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Amin speaks about this same leadership trait in the captain, who is always willing to listen. “Shubman is the kind of guy where a 15-year-old was there and he had an opinion on something and Shubman thought it would be useful to him, he would listen to him,” he says.

Behind those soft features and dimpled smile, there is a steely resolve to stay ahead. “The guy puts in hours… he puts in some serious hours to get better. Like I’m telling you about the red ball, how he’s practising against it, even when he’s in India. He’s just trying to stay one step ahead,” says Amin.

It is the same pursuit of perfection that started from the border town. Life came full circle for Shubman at The Oval. In a 2-2 verdict, it was tough to say if the runs brought the best out of his captaincy or the captaincy triggered an avalanche of runs.

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