Playing in only his second Test match as Indian captain, Shubman Gill not only amassed 430 runs to have the second-highest aggregate in Test behind England batsman Graham Gooch’s 456 against India in 1990, but also became the first captain to lead a Asian side to a win at Edgbaston with his side winning the second Test by 336 runs on Sunday. Former England captain Nasser Hussain has praised the 25-year-old for his tactical acumen as well for being calm and composed in his time as the Indian Test captain and has also termed Gill as a different character than Virat Kohli. Gill, who played knocks of 269 and 161 runs in the Edgbaston Test also became the seventh batsman to score centuries in his first two Tests as captain.
“He’s always going to be calm and composed. You just listen to that interview. He has got a very low heartbeat. So, he is not going to be a Kohli type character. He has got a low heartbeat but that can help. Look at all the crowds here today. Look at all of India watching on. You may need someone just to calm the team. He did some subtle things, which we would not do. You know, Akash Deep bowled beautifully from this end. This morning we thought he’s going to start from this end (Pavillion end). He starts him up at the other end. And it worked. So, there were tactical things in the game that he did in the game as well that really worked. The most important, get runs. That’s his number one job. And he’s got a shedload of runs,” Hussain said while speaking with Sky Sports.
India had lost the first Test at Headingley by five wickets on a batting friendly wicket. While it was Gill’s maiden Test as the Indian captain, the Indian team lost the Test match despite their batsman hitting five hundreds in the match. With India still needing seven wickets on the final day at Edgbaston and rain reducing the day’s play to 80 overs instead of the 90 overs, Gill was at his best shuffling his bowlers and making sure that India won the Test match with almost 13 overs remaining. Hussain was of the view that Gill was more visible in his tactics and managing the team on the field at Edgbaston. “I do think that was important. I do think he was more visible. It’s very easy when you lose, you sort of blame the captain and say, ‘Oh he went missing’. And when you win, you go, ‘Oh, he’s a great captain.’ But I do think just watching from up above (from the commentary box),which we often do, the Headingley game, there was a lot of input from a lot of people and it was like who’s in charge. You look down today and he was in charge and the camera often went on him and he was moving fielders around. He still needs help from Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul or whatever, but he looked in charge,” said Hussain.
Former Indian head coach Ravi Shastri too talked about Gill’s bowling changes on the last day of the Edgbaston Test and Gill’s proactive bowling changes. “One word comes to mind. He was assertive in this game. Yes, he took advice from other people but it was his decision. And a smart one today in hindsight. A lot of people thought, we thought you know Akash Deep should have started from the pavilion end. He opted for him to bowl from the other end. Now he had batted that surface more than anybody else. So he would have known which are the areas that can give problems and who is most likely bowler to hit those patches early on to put England back. He knew if India take a couple of wickets in the first half an hour, one hour, the game is cracked open. England are on the back foot. They can’t win. You can have men in catching positions and his bowling changes today were proactive and he was spot on,” Shastri told Sky Sports.
