At every net session, it becomes clear why India believe in Shubman Gill. He plays shots that are supposed to be hard ever so easily. There was this pull to a ball that was climbing up towards his rib cage at the Gabba. He swayed inside the line, just a subtle realigning of his torso, nothing more followed by a swivel of the back foot to direct the ball where he wanted it to go. The eye test in cricket is a rudimentary measure of how good a batter is based on how comfortable they look in the middle. Are they moving into the ball, or are they stuck on the crease? Are they rushed by quality bowling, or do they actually make it look a bit meh? Gill has been very good at passing the eye test in this Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

But his highest score is 31. This has been happening for a while.  In Birmingham 2022, as India attempted to build on their 2-1 lead in the Pataudi Trophy, he began his innings with a couple of crisp drives, and then he pulled Stuart Broad disdainfully in front of square. Each of those shots was a rendition of his natural instincts. Letting them take over got him to 17 runs from 20 balls. Letting them run unchecked got him dismissed for 17 off 24. James Anderson dangled one wide of off stump, and Gill took the bait. Since Gill announced himself almost four years ago, setting up India's win at the Gabba with 91 off 146 balls, his highest score outside Asia is 36.

During this period, he has only 267 runs to show across 16 innings in Australia, England, South Africa and the West Indies, for an average of 17.80. He has developed a habit of looking really, really good, and then just randomly getting out. Earlier this week, at the Gabba, he essentially middled a wide ball from Mitchell Starc into a packed slip cordon for Mitchell Marsh to pull off a superb catch. India were 6 for 2, and the irony was that Gill had attended the pre-match press conference and highlighted how the batters' focus was in doing whatever it took to get big first-innings runs. 

Gill once spoke, to the Grade Cricketer podcast, of how his technique has been able to survive the journey up to international cricket; that even his coaches didn't really believe he needed to change much. He must have wowed them all with his attacking shots, the ones that are difficult to play but come so naturally to him, especially off the back foot. From that point, it can almost be taken for granted that the other stuff - the boring stuff like blocking the ball or leaving it - would also be in order. Only the hard hands that he uses to put power into those impossible shots - the pulls, the jabs, and the punches - were leading to his downfall when he had to just defend.

The hard hands that took advantage of bowlers just trying to hold a line outside off stump in limited-overs cricket were leading him into trouble in Test cricket. He ended up playing deliveries he should be leaving. In the WTC 2023 final, he left one that he should have been playing. It became confusing. On a Port of Spain pitch where every other member of the top four made fifties, he got caught for 10 because he didn't seem to trust his own judgment of what to play and what not to, so he just played at everything. It bled into another one of his strengths - dealing with left-arm pace.

Until 12 months ago, he had only been dismissed to them once, averaging 145. In the last 12 months, he has been knocked by them over five times, averaging 13.80.In 2024, Gill began the home series against England with a pair of low scores, and it felt like his place in the side was under threat. He trained extremely hard - he had kids bowling to him in the Visakhapatnam nets, and he gave them the utmost respect - and emerged the second-highest scorer across the five Tests with two crucial centuries.

He has credited that period as an important part of his career so far. Preparation and repetition, that's how Gill likes to work through the challenges he comes up against. So perhaps the more time he has spent at No. 3, the better he will get. It has been 18 months since he has permanently taken over that position. He isn't the perfect fit there. His best position might be one step lower, but that's occupied. 

Melbourne, the venue of the fourth Test against Australia, is likely to offer fast-bowler friendly conditions again, and Australia will once again look to drag him forward - which he tends to do reluctantly - and tempt him to play away from his body - which he tends to do liberally - and that disconnect is what often leads him into danger, as he ends up reaching away from his body. Gill could still get out that way. Batting in the top three has been extremely hard in this series. But he would want to make it a little harder than it currently is for bowlers to pick up his wicket.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)