The Shubman Gill ‘trigger’
The rising young Indian batter is operating with a flawed stance and point of trigger movement.
Shubman Gill wasn’t supposed to struggle but dominate the West Indies attack he faced on the recent trip. The rising young Indian batter, who had basically outbatted three greats of Indian One-Day batting, struck a maiden T20I century, bagged an ‘Orange Cap’ IPL season and made two Test match hundreds in his last five Tests leading into the Caribbean tour, was expected to ace this challenge across formats.
Gill instead underwent a major dip, looking short of command and flow at the crease, and finding multiple ways to get out. With just two fifty plus scores across formats in 11 innings played on the tour, he saw his stocks and perceptions falling when this was an opportunity for him to build on his year-long gains and enrich his status in Indian cricket.
Given these are times of modest attention spans, when he was supposed to be raved over as one of the first names on India’s World Cup sheet, the 23-year-old has had negativity brewing over him these past weeks; criticism on technique aside, there have been suggestions on his ability to bat on anything less than flat pitches, which, not just a refutable claim, is sadly indicative of a poor fan culture.
This nauseating brigade tends to run on overdrive for young Indian cricketers these days. Grateful as we can be for the culture within the system where coaches, selectors and the team management operate in great patience with talent once identified, there is a separate culture existing like a pandemic on the outside, which lives only in the ‘present’, easily forgets anything remotely associated with the past, works on extreme impatience, anger, dissing, even abuse and name-calling, with no iota of care or focus attached to the whys and hows of a cricketer’s failings.
It’s completely alright for a young Indian batter to have an off-tour in an extremely busy cricket calendar while he is obviously still developing and enhancing his range and skillset, gradually becoming a robust player with experience of success and failures in good measure under his belt. The very reason you have such impatience and overreaction is a sign that Indian cricketers of the day and the team as a whole is giving fans more days to feel satisfied, providing a higher standard of cricket and results than the Indian teams of the past.
But, and this without giving two hoots to the noise on outside, there was something to be noted about Gill’s struggles in the Caribbean, in that there were unique: for the first time in his young career, even the prodigiously talented right-hander was found short of reaction time at the crease.
Now, this could’ve been due to the inconsistent speed and bounce at which the ball lifted off the surfaces onto the batter across Tests, ODIs and T20Is played in Dominica, Trinidad, Barbados, Guyana and Florida. All through the tour, Indian batters had to deal with varying bounce and late movement off the turf, most evident during the first two matches of the ODI series played at the Kensington Oval. But perhaps the impact of such bounce and lift, and movement, was only accentuated by a flawed trigger movement observed with Gill all series.
Gill could be found wanting against inward movement, but he is never late on the ball quite like he was on this tour facing Kemar Roach in Tests, and Alzarri Joseph and Jayden Seales in the white-ball leg. Severe on anything remotely short, he was out miscueing and top-edging an attempted pull or that famous jab through mid-wicket region during the T20I series. But there was one dismissal during the Tests off Roach, which I felt, underlined the issues he is currently facing with his stance and trigger movement.
It came in the first-innings of the second Test in Trinidad, where Roach got Gill out edging one behind to the keeper. The ball came in with the angle from wide of the crease to make the right-hander commit to playing the line just outside the off-stump before it landed and straightened just enough to extract the outside edge. Too good a ball, unplayable, you’d think? No. Watch it closely, and Gill was about a split-second short into doing enough to cover for that late movement and defending, perhaps leaving, or even pushing the ball past Roach for a boundary.
To understand the issue at hand from basics, let’s focus on the split-screens of Gill’s stance, his trigger movement and how he ultimately ended up playing this Roach delivery. Gill has been standing a foot outside the leg-stump, showing the bowler all three sticks, and undergoing a back-and-across trigger movement from there towards the off-stump.
While there is nothing wrong in shifting back-and-across for a right-hander, as it gives him space, balance, control and a strong position to counter both the fuller and the shorter lengths and play strokes all around the ground, since Gill has been standing bit too far outside the leg-stump, he has been found late in completing the very trigger movement that is supposed to aid his wings.
A balanced, side-on position, decent backlift and back-and-across trigger, one would think, would be prerequisite for success on both sides of the wicket. But Gill has been self-negating the virtues of these by standing too far on one side and being late to finish his trigger. Him showing all three sticks also gives the seamers a greater sighter to aim for the stump line, and since he was late to move across and get into a good position, Gill often found the ball coming at him quicker and denying him time to flick this exact line to the on-side.
Roach and rest of West Indies seamers smartly even packed the leg-side field to keep bowling that line and set Gill up for the one straightening enough or jagging away late after pitching. Splitting the Roach dismissal gives us an even better view of how he was mainly undone by a late trigger movement more than the seaming ball.
Notice in the fourth part how Gill is still only halfway through his downswing with the bat even as the ball has reached parallel to his front-pad. Roach is significantly slower these days, an ageing and roughed up version of the high-speed merchant of pace and hostility he was in his prime. Yet, Gill was found short of time to sight, gear across and cover for the movement outside the off-stump. He was still into his stroke and downswing when the ball rushed him and took the outside edge.
Even in the limited-overs leg, Gill continued with this technique and stance. Below is a split-screen of him facing Seales for his scratchy but promising 85 in the third ODI in Tarouba and versus left-arm quick Obed McCoy during his sumptuous 77 off 47 in the fourth T20I in Florida. Such knocks and scores would perhaps reinfuse belief in Gill about this method. But he would do well to notice the rest of the nine innings he batted on the trip where this method proved ineffective and jarred on him.
In both those innings, with negligible movement available off the fuller lengths on flat pitches using the thin-seamed Kookaburra ball, West Indies operated shorter than ideal to Gill, which gave him the time and space to go through his trigger in time to get into a strong position. I was hoping to find a split on length from these two innings but it wasn’t available. However, BCCI app’s ‘wagon wheel’ section provided something useful. In both the innings, a higher number of Gill’s runs came through the on-side and mainly square off the wicket. The off-side runs he scored were also more towards deep-third and point, able to cut and punch the ball, which highlights of a shorter-length dominant plan from West Indies. Below is a split-screen from the 77 made in the fourth T20I, followed by the 85 scored in the ODI played in Trinidad.
Taking nothing away from those two innings, but the fact that Gill required shorter lengths to ease his life in the middle only reinforces one thing: the livelihood and sustenance of this method depends largely on the length and the surface in play. Yet, from the batter’s perspective, it would unfair to completely ignore his thought process in believing it as safe strategy and to not get into why he would’ve hatched his bets on this method. To get there, I thought it would be wise to track where he began standing like this at the point of bowler’s release. And, after undergoing highlights of Gill’s batting, it hit me that he has been operating with this technique throughout the year with mixed success directly aligned with the conditions on offer.
From dominating the ODI matches versus Sri Lanka, New Zealand to producing his maiden T20I ton versus the Kiwis and enjoying unmatched excellence during IPL 2023 to nailing a century in Ahmedabad but failing at the World Test Championship final and now this West Indies tour, this has been Gill’s initial point of standing just before the ball is released: an extra step outside the leg-stump.
Above is a split-screen of Gill pulverizing the Aussies on an unresponsive Ahmedabad track and him faltering against the same attack on a more seamer-friendly deck at The Oval. In one, he goes on to produce a hundred of strong command and pedigree; while in the other, he struggles to the ball that moves away sharply off a length and induces the outside edge after an encouraging, run-a-ball 18. The difference is the pace, the bounce and the movement on offer from the track and overall conditions for the quicks. Below is how that second-innings dismissal at the WTC final panned out.
Gill is still on the move when this fantastic delivery from Scott Boland jumps off a length, jags away laterally and takes the outside edge towards the slip cordon. Starting outside the leg-stump, the 23-year-old is late to trigger across and get into a position where he can cover for the movement and unleash a straighter downswing of the bat or be in a comfortable enough spot to leave this ball safely. That also illustrates that this trigger makes Gill push at deliveries that are admittedly close to that off-stump but certainly avoidable. Like the Roach dismissal. He feels for these balls when with a traditional leg-stump or middle-and-leg stance, and trigger point, he would in a position to leave this one. For all the late movement Boland generated, Gill could’ve left that if he had reached a strong position after his trigger.
The key difference is the space between the leg-stick and where Gill takes his side-on stance: in having to shuffle across for these extra meters, the young gun is being denied the opportunity to complete that trigger movement judiciously. It’s why, coaches have historically emphasized on standing at the leg-stump, not one stick forward or behind, for then the traditional back-and-across trigger movement would usually take you towards the off-stump or in line with that virtual fourth stump in time. Once there, you have those crucial milliseconds extra to assess the ball’s whereabouts: the length, most importantly, and any lateral movement, in the air and off the deck, and react proficiently.
In Gill’s thought process, however, this trigger was designed to counter a longstanding problem that had held him back after tremendous success in his debut Test series in Australia. With the inward movement troubling him, the batter decided to stand further outside the leg-stump, so that when the ball finishes at the stump line, he has the bat, not that frontpad, making contact with the ball. In conditions bordering on the extreme and attacks unprecedently robust, with irregular game time amidst injuries, Gill has had a better start to his Test career than given due acknowledgement for aged 23. But this issue has held his wings as well: 11 of Gill’s 18 Test dismissals off pace have been either bowled, LBW or caught by the wicketkeeper. Of the rest seven, only one was not behind the stumps.
But as is the case with techniques in our sport: you cover for one flaw, another appears and forces you into repair work again. With this transformation in his stance, Gill has managed to curb down dismissals on the inside edge, but since shouldering arms to an incomer from Boland in the first-innings at The Oval, 11 of 12 times the right-hander has gotten out to balls meant to beat his outside edge or aimed for the upper half of his body. Bar the LBW in the final T20I in USA, rest of Gill’s dismissals in this period have either been off the outside edge, top-edge or miscueing a stroke in front of the wicket.
On pitches with as much inconsistent bounce and intermittent movement as seen in the Caribbean, this technique would’ve created an even bigger stranglehold on Gill and perhaps ravaged his headspace. Why, by the third T20I, I thought, the team management should just relieve him of his misery for this trip and let him mentally refresh for the Asia Cup coming next week.
Despite all this, it would be a mistake to assume Gill can just bat on flatter pitches. Far from it. We shall never forget, this is a player who emerged as one of the keys to India’s most cherished series victory overseas in Australia. In hostile conditions, facing an attack with depth, skill and variety, this is the same player who made scores of 45, 35*, 50, 31, 7, and 91 at the Gabba — which shall be remembered as one of the finest innings played by an Indian in foreign conditions. To sum up the challenge: of all the Indian batters who batted at least four times during that Border-Gavaskar Trophy, only two averaged 40. Gill finished with his 259 runs made at 51.80!!
Before this West Indies tour, there were talks of India giving Gill unfair nod on other India hopefuls by easing him into the middle-order without putting his opening trails under scrutiny. This again belied the conditions in which Gill has had to start his Test career: in Test matches involving him before the recent series in Dominica and Trinidad, mean average of all opposition openers playing on the same surfaces had been 27.49. Gill averaged 32.89 in his opener’s era. Enough to vindicate the backing provided to him by the selectors and the management, who were keen to play him in the middle-order as early as Dravid’s first series in charge in November 2021 until an injury to KL Rahul forced the change of plans. Look at it the way you can, but exceptional talents will always be treated differently.
For Gill, the issue isn’t that he can’t deal with spicy pitches, it is that his current stance is ailing on his technique to counter surfaces with side-ways movement and bounce. The batter perhaps focused more of his energies in papering over a longstanding flaw and failed to preempt the repercussions that would follow. Understandably, the former was a bigger issue, in that it involved two most common forms of dismissals with most, if not all, right-arm seamers bowling the inward line more than the one going away from the right-hander.
That chink was a byproduct of two sub-issues with Gill’s technique: he wouldn’t crouch low enough for the fuller length ball, he perhaps still doesn’t having grown up on a dose of shorter stuff in Mohali batting in the middle-order domestically, and, when earlier standing close to the middle-stump, he would go too far across the off-stump with his side-ways trigger. Former India batter and renowned Indian coach WV Raman had spoken in detail about it during an interview with ‘Indian Express’ in July. Raman, who has worked with Gill at the NCA and on away tours in age-group cricket, said an exaggerated trigger, hard hands and not crouching low enough for the full ball had hurt him.
“I found he was making too much trigger movement sideways. It was also a bit quick. What could result from it is, you will have real good days and real bad days,” Raman said. “On some days the trigger movement will be in sync or bowling will be such that it will help you get runs. And on certain days the movements will be disconnected with what is being required.”
Stressing his point, Raman said any batter who undergoes a 90-degree sideways movement towards his right, is bound to face issues when the ball moves in late. “When you settle down (after the trigger movement), you will have to have the same balance you had in the stance. You either had to reduce your movement or mask the movement in sync with the bowlers’ run-up or the release. You have to try and work it out yourself to understand what suits you better.”
“What Gill has done off late is he has tried to reduce the movement. He is a lot more still and steady so that he can gauge the length and line better. Because beyond a point, any decent bowler will exploit any chinks in the armour they find in your technique.”
For Gill, a counter-response on the extreme is why this evident change in technique isn’t bearing him the desired fruits on pitches where the ball moves late or lifts off the deck with extra sting and venom. What he needs is a minor course-correction: take one step backwards, and start standing at the leg-stump or middle-and-leg again, which will then make sure his current, more balanced trigger movement takes him towards the fourth stump line in time and without making him excessively feel for the ball, for he would then be in a strong position, and mentally relaxed just prior to the point when the ball reaches him and would make a more judicious assessment behind his decisions.
Gill’s issues would automatically solve themselves when he enters a prolong phase of limited-overs cricket on more-or-less flat pitches in the subcontinent over the pivotal next two months. But come the tour of South Africa in December when he re-enters the stage as India’s new Test match No.3, he will be encountering conditions with even greater lateral movement, pace, and bounce, with relentless accuracy from an attack of higher standard, depth and quality than the West Indies. With zero breathing space expected in Cape Town and Centurion, and minimum time at hands before the marque assignment, Gill has no option but to ‘stand corrected’.
