Shubman Gill faced a lot of flak for the selection calls going into the second Test against England, but it doesn’t seem to have affected his batting in any adverse way. In fact, the extra scrutiny seems to have worked in his favour as he scored his second century in as many games on the opening day at Edgbaston. Not only did the skipper extricate the team from a tricky position with half the side gone with only all-rounders and tail-enders to accompany him, the ton is statistically the most secure ever scored on English shores, since such records have been kept. According to CricViz, Gill’s false shot percentage during Wednesday’s knock was just 3.5 percent. The average in England is 12 percent. The BBC said this statistic made it the most controlled hundred in England since 2006, when such numbers began being collated. It contained just two outside edges off Chris Woakes – both before Gill had reached 20. There was an inside edge off Brydon Carse that helped Gill survive an LBW appeal. England took a review, but burnt it. Any edge, play-and-miss or mishit is considered a false shot, and there were three more of these from Gill – one off Woakes and two off Gill’s counterpart Ben Stokes. Rahul Dravid, Ricky Ponting and Kumar Sangakkara, all of whom have scored memorable hundreds in England, didn’t exhibit this level of control. Neither did home team stalwarts such as Alastair Cook, Kevin Pietersen and Joe Root. In recent times, England’s greatest tormentor was been Aussie legend Steve Smith, who has scored eight hundreds there. But the lowest false-shot percentage in any of those tons was 9 per cent. The previous lowest by any overseas player in England, according to CricViz, was 4.4 percent managed by South African great Jacques Kallis during the 2012 Oval Test. What could have worked in Gill’s favour was that it was the second-easiest on record on the opening day of an Edgbaston Test, behind the one provided for the 2017 game against the West Indies, but nevertheless Gill has to be commended for the degree of control he exhibited under so much personal pressure, with the team already 0-1 down in a five-match series. The achievement is all the more significant as he averaged just 14.66 across six innings before the current tour. “When he last came to England, he played with hard hands and pushed at the ball. Now he allows the ball to come and hit the bat. He is trusting his defence,” former India head coach Ravi Shastri told Sky Sports.
