Despite his prolonged lull since a return to the T20I fold as India’s vice captain and opening partner to Abhishek Sharma, Shubman Gill has found backing from his IPL head coach, Ashish Nehra. The Gujarat Titans head coach has reacted to Gill’s poor start to the South Africa series, where he was dismissed twice in three deliveries.
Gill fell for 4 off two deliveries in the series opener in Cuttack and was dismissed for a golden duck by Lungi Ngidi in Mullanpur on Thursday. Nehra said backed his Gujarat skipper, insisting that the 26-year-old could not be evaluated on the back of a few poor outings.
“Look, the player you are talking about. If IPL was 3 weeks away, I wouldn’t be worried. Because you are talking about T20 format. And there are only 2 matches played with South Africa. If I am not wrong. And this is our problem. In such a fast-paced format, whether it is international cricket or IPL, if we start evaluating players like Gill after two-three matches, then it will be difficult,” Nehra was quoted as saying by PTI.
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“You have many options, if you want to see. You can remove Abhishek Sharma and Shubman Gill. You can open with Sai Sudharsan and Ruturaj Gaikwad. If you want to remove them, you can do it with Washington Sundar and Ishan Kishan. So options are always there if there are talks about changing players after not good stats, but aise karege to bahut mushkil hogi (If we do this like this, then it would be difficult),” he added.
Despite his patchy form, Gill also found support from Team India assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate after India’s 51-run defeat in Mullanpur on Thursday.
“I saw some good signs of a change in mentality on the back end of that Australian tour (in Shubman). Even with these two dismissals in this series, in the first game we asked the guys to go out and attack on the power play, and the wicket was not very great at Cuttack,” Doeschate told reporters.
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“So I will let him go off with that one. Today, he got out to a great ball. This can happen when you are short on form. But we also believe in his class. If you look at his IPL records, he has stacked 600-700-800 runs, and he will come good,” he added.