Former India all-rounder Irfan Pathan has opened up about Shubman Gill’s recent struggles with the bat in Australia during the ongoing five-match T20I series.
Speaking on his YouTube channel, Irfan said that there is pressure on Gill, as the team management has to leave out players such as Sanju Samson and Yashasvi Jaiswal in order to accommodate him in the opening position.
“Once you give yourself a couple of overs to settle, you can always cover and catch up eventually,” he said. “He (Gill) has range; it’s not as if he doesn’t have range. He must be thinking about the players sitting on the bench. A player like Sanju Samson is missing out. He has been involved in international cricket for 10 years, and he finally had a year in which he scored three T20I hundreds; even after that, he has to move out of his position to accommodate Shubman Gill,” he said. “Now, after being demoted, he is being dropped as well. A talented player like Jaiswal is also sitting out. It’s not as if Shubman Gill doesn’t know this, so there will be pressure.”
Gill remained unbeaten on 37 off 20 balls when the first T20I was abandoned in Canberra, but in the second and third matches he failed miserably, scoring 5 and 15 respectively. Even in the ODI series, he couldn’t reach the fifty-run mark.
Sanju Samson hit three hundreds in T20Is in 2024 and was in red-hot form in the opening slot, but when Gill made a comeback to the T20I team, Samson was demoted in the line-up.
Irfan wished Samson luck after he was left out of the third T20I.
“If I were Sanju Samson, I’d be thinking that even after working so hard and scoring so many runs, things should have been much better than this. Even he must be thinking the same. Sanju Samson, my prayers and good wishes are with you,” he added.
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