41 days of cricket in 101: Gill’s unforgiving
NEW DELHI: September 10, 14, 19, 21, 24, 26, 28.
October 2-4, 10-14. October 19, 23, 25, 29, 31.
November 2, 6, 8, 14-18, 22-26, 30.
December 3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 17, 19.
Welcome to the world of Shubman Gill. By the time India’s Test and ODI captain will have completed this winter’s schedule, he will have logged enough airmiles to be eligible for the most premium frequent flyer programmes ever designed.It also acts as a window into the kind of calendar that’s baked into most elite teams these days. With Gill’s ascension as captain in ODIs as well, he will know that he won’t be afforded enough workload management days, days that will be readily available to some of his other all format colleagues. From that perspective alone, his is a schedule that’s unprecedented by most modern standards.
Even otherwise, the term, at least from an Indian cricket perspective, doesn’t apply to batters. “I don’t know how you look at workload management, but generally we do it for bowlers, mainly fast bowlers,” Sitanshu Kotak, India’s batting coach, had toldworkload management is actually meant for fast bowlers. For batters, I don’t think workload management is that much of an issue.”
Ajit Agarkar, chairman of the men’s selection committee, sang from the same hymn sheet, when he addressed the issue following the first Test at Ahmedabad.
“Hopefully not,” Agarkar said when asked about the dangers of Gill suffering a burnout. “I mean, he’s still quite young. We saw what he did in England under immense pressure. So, there were positive signs there. You have seen his record in One-day cricket as a batter. We hope there’s no burnout.”is the new poster boy of cricket in India, an all-format superstar, a multi-format leader of men and the public face of many an FMCG. But that kind of ignores the unforgiving schedule the 26-year-old is currently on. His next meaningful break will be around Christmas and New Year when he has a few weeks off after South Africa. But post the New Year, he has a packed six months till the completion of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
That also means not much time to improve his game in the nets, a lack of time to finetune his technique if he wants to work on a few things. He spoke on moving from one format to another without a proper break ahead of the first Test.