How Shubman Gill walked down the track to unsettle England’s pacers for his hundred in Ahmedabad

Rohit Sharma lofts the pacers straight. Virat Kohli swat-flicks. Shubman Gill walks. Of the current Indian batsmen, and perhaps it can be stretched to around the world, Gill owns this walking-down-the-track business to the pacers like no one else. The occasional problem, as witnessed in the Sydney Test, can come up when he runs down the pitch, but he more or less bosses with the walk-down. There is also Yashasvi Jaiswal, who religiously trains for that shot in nets, but Gill has been at it far longer and more effectively. It’s a shot he repeatedly went for in the third ODI against England in Ahmedabad—where he now has an international hundred in every format—using it to ensure the pacers are never sure of the right length to bowl at him or at the least, settle into a pattern.
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Not that there have not been batsmen who have done it before. In particular, two batsmen deployed that tactic consently. Australia’s Matthew Hayden, and before him South Africa’s Gary Kirsten. Interestingly, both saw the approach rather differently in their minds.
Kirsten was one of the earliest to develop that process, and he didn’t see it as risky or adrenalin-kicker, but as an effective tool to score runs. “It was like a release shot that I felt was fairly low risk. But that certainly did help me get the ball to the boundary when I was under pressure. So yes, it was something that I developed in my game that was really helpful to me,” Kirsten once told The Indian Express.
On the other hand, Hayden saw it as a tool of intimidation. “There’s a tremendous adrenaline rush when you walk down the track. I do it when the bowlers settle into a pattern of play where you think they are bowling very well. Walking down is a good way to unsettle play,” Hayden once said. “It’s really throwing out a challenge to them: I know you’re bowling really well here, but I am not going to let you.”
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Calm and casual
In between these two approaches lies Gill’s walk. There is a calmness and lack of bossiness in his walk that is in contrast to Hayden’s snarl. There is a bit more aggression than was seen in Kirsten’s approach. Hayden talked about how he just wanted to “watch the ball and smash wherever it was bowled” when he did that, and Kirsten was more cautious, willing to wr it past square or place it through cover point or on drive. Sourav Ganguly would do it and mostly slap it through cover point. Gill mostly likes to drive them on the up in the V.
He started that as early as the sixth ball he faced, though he drove Saqib Mahmood straight to mid-off. He had started the innings slowly, soaking up 10 dot balls before he creamed one through covers. He again walked down the track two balls later to Saqib, and again mid-off intervened.
A few balls later came the first run-scoring shot with that approach. In the 5th over, again off Saqib, he not only walked down but also held his head gloriously still at impact, and punched to the straight boundary. That head position is quite something to see when he does the walk, almost as if he makes an extra effort to keep it still when he is down the track. Something that occasionally goes awry for him when he is rushing down the track as it did in Sydney on that brain-fade moment in the second innings with the series on the line. But even there, when he isn’t exactly in the slog mode, he keeps it pretty composed. There were a few charges in Ahmedabad where he bashed the bowlers – again mostly in the arc from long-on to long-off.
Karsan Ghavri, the former India pacer, who was one of the early coaches and shaped fundamentals, has a chuckle about that walk. “He certainly didn’t have that then. I can see the occasional running down the track probably but not the walk. He used to bat from the crease mostly, and his technique was tight. He has developed the walking shot for the white-ball cricket as it can affect the bowlers. I just wish he doesn’t run down the track in Tests!” Clearly, the Sydney dash hasn’t faded from memory yet.Story continues below this ad
Strategic ploy
On his best days, he uses the walk strategically against pacers like Saqib who like to hit the back of length to good length. That walk gets him close, also pressurises the bowlers into changing lengths – and with his penchant to punch on the up, he is more than ready if they drag back the length. At times they try to hurl it wider, and he then frees his arms to carve the ball up and over the off-side field. Or when they drag it too short, he unfurls the flat-batted pull, but again in that V.
Like it happened in the 9th over, with Saqib. The first attempt to walk a few paces had the ball punched to mid-off, a dot ball but that had the bowler thinking. Next time, he did in the same over, Saqib hurled it far shorter and pretty much straight, and Gill biffed it flat batted over mid-on.
Gill also tried that approach a couple of times to the slower Gus Atkinson but for some reason, perhaps due the lack of pace that throttled the intended punches, it wasn’t that effective. And so he began to charge him, dash down the track, and hammered him. As he would do in the 14th over, over long-on.
Eventually came the hundred moment with a glorious shot. This wasn’t the walk, but it’s a shot so graceful that’s worth mentioning. He did his usual trigger movement of going back and a touch across and as the 145.3 kmph length delivery tailed in towards the middle stump, he calmly leaned into it to gorgeously wr it between mid-on and deep midwicket fielder. He held the bat up on his left hand, unusual for a right-handed batsman, and holding the helmet in his right hand, he did a graceful bow to the crowd to cap a knock that oozed off grace.