NEW DELHI: Legendary Sunil Gavaskar voiced his anger over the shot selection of Shubman Gill in the first innings of the third Test in Brisbane on Monday. The former India captain urged Gill to ‘leave your image in the dressing room’ and put the fancy shots in his ‘back pocket’.
Gill chased a delivery outside off stump, playing it away from his body, resulting in an outside edge. Mitchell Marsh pulled off a brilliant catch at gully off Mitchell Starc’s bowling.
“Leave your image in the dressing room,” Gavaskar said on Star Sports.
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“Certain shots are dangerous at the start of your innings before you are set, and you don’t have the measure of what the wicket is doing. Keep all those shots in your back pocket. Take them out when you are 30-40-50 not out, then can you get those shots again,” Gavaskar said.
“Not very good shot selection, you could say. It was a very good catch, so there was a little bit of bad luck as well over there. But he could have left that ball alone; it would have gone harmlessly to the wicketkeeper,” he further added.
Gavaskar also urged Virat Kohli to take inspiration from Sachin Tendulkar‘s iconic 241 against Australia in Sydney in 2004, advising him to avoid playing the cover drive to overcome his ongoing struggles with deliveries outside the off-stump.
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“He (Kohli) only needs to look at his hero, Sachin Tendulkar. The way in which he (Tendulkar) had kept his patience and control on his off-side game, scoring those 241 runs at Sydney,” Gavaskar told Star Sports.
Kohli suffered yet another failure as Josh Hazlewood dismissed him for 3, leaving a struggling India at 51 for 4 at stumps on Day 3, trailing by 394 runs.