Shubman Gill Is The Most Complete Athlete I Have Seen: R Sridhar

Indian fielding coach R Sridhar heaped high praise on young opener, Shubman Gill, stating that the 21-year-old is the ‘most complete athlete’ he has ever seen. He also lauded Gill’s hand-eye coordination.

Shubman Gill has been picked in the 20-men squad for the upcoming tour of the UK and the 21-year-old will be looking to shrugs off his recent poor returns during the home series against England and in the IPL and establish himself as India’s premier opener.

During a recent chat with Times of India, R Sridhar was asked about he did he decide to allot a fielding position to a new player like Shubman Gill.

”Talking about Shubman, I feel he is the most complete athlete I have seen. He is slim, tall, runs fast and has got good hand-eye coordination. On most occasions when a new player comes in – we know his strengths and weaknesses as we would have seen him play in the IPL or in India ‘A’. My job as the fielding coach is to make sure his mindset is in tune with the national team. We also observe his hand-eye coordination, his reflexes, how good his hands are, his speed to the ball and ability to throw from the deep and ball sense,” R Sridhar said.

There is just one little weakness in Shubman Gill’s batting: Brad Hogg

Meanwhile, former Aussie leg-spinner Brad Hogg has pointed out a technical deficiency in Shubman Gill’s batting.

Gill, who had a brilliant tour of Australia where he showed his backfoot game to the hilt against the likes of Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, and Jos Hazlewood, struggled against England in home conditions as the likes of James Anderson and other English pacers kept testing him outside the off-stump.

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The upcoming tour of England will be a huge challenge for Shubman Gill as he is likely to face seaming conditions and against the best exponents of the Dukes, which moves around appreciably because of its pronounced seam.

Hogg noted that Gill tends to play away from his body outside the off-stump, something that the Kiwi and English bowlers can exploit to the hilt, especially during the initial phase of his innings.

”There is just one little weakness in his batting which I would be attacking. Whenever you can, you just try and let him play away from his body outside the off-stump. He sort of plays a half-cut half backfoot drive, you just got to try and expose that with the new ball. That’s the only thing I see as his weakness. But the thing is, that’s where he scores a lot of runs as well. There’s no point in over-emphasizing that weakness if he is averaging 40 in that particular area with that particular shot.” he added.

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