Ravichandran Ashwin has blamed Shubman Gill’s failure to convert starts to technical flaws resulting out of the constant shift from red-ball to white-ball cricket.
Taking to X, Ashwin went into full professor mode to provide a technical breakdown of Gill’s batting.
“Sunny bhai is talking about how Shubman’s bat was really close to the pad in England where he made all his runs. I am going to try and illustrate the challenge for a modern-day batter, the changes which happen automatically most of the time when you shift in & out of red-ball cricket,” he wrote.
Gill’s natural style, shaped by strong bottom-hand usage, can sometimes make it harder to adjust late when the ball seams back in. The former off-spinner stressed that this was not a major flaw but a momentary loss of awareness.
The India Test and ODI captain’s dismissal to inswinging deliveries was in
stark contrast to his outstanding display in England last year, where he scored 754 runs at an average of 75.40 with four centuries.
Ashwin broke the sequence down frame by frame. In the first image, he said Gill was in his most “natural receiving position”, shaped by years of training, with the bat being picked up from gully as he prepares to play through the line. In the second frame, Ashwin noted that Gill had judged the line early and “realigned his bat to meet the ball head on and is in superb position”.
The problem, Ashwin described, begins just after that. He pointed out that the bat now “needed to start curving in to meet the ball such that he doesn’t leave a gap between bat and ball”.
In the third image, that “gap has started to emerge here and he knows he is in trouble because the ball has pitched and started to duck back in”.
“He should be able to release his bottom hand a touch and manoeuvre his hands closer to the pads and handle this delivery.”
Ashwin felt the solution lay in subtle handwork rather than drastic movement. “If you see closely, the bottom hand, which is supposed to be used for dexterity, hasn’t loosened up and allowed the last-minute adjustment... Even though he wants to shut the gap down, his bottom hand, which is firm on the handle, isn’t allowing him to do it.
“This is what happened now, but he managed to address this while he was playing tests in England.”
