Newly appointed India Test captain Shubman Gill has picked the two differences he has found in Ashish Nehra and Gautam Gambhir’s coaching style. Gill, who took over as Gujarat Titans captain last year in the Indian Premier League, has been working with Nehra who is mostly hands on. On the other hand, he now gets a chance to work with Gambhir in the national team set-up, who has come across an intense character.
Speaking to in Sky Cricket, Gill was asked how he has to adapt to the contrasting styles of both the coaches. “It will be fun,” Gill said. “Ashu pa (Nehra) is very, like you said, very hands-on, very animated and very expressive in terms of his personality and your personality kind of reflects on your coaching style as well. So he’s very expressive. Whereas Gautam is very determined, very committed. And he’s also very clear with his communication, what he wants from the players and what kind of mindset that he would want the players to have. And I think Gautam bhai focuses more on the kind of attitude or the mindset that he requires from the team or the players. They’re very different personalities, but at the end of the day, you’re all working towards a common goal. The paths might be different, but you’re trying to reach the same destination,” Gill noted.
With England thin on bowling resources, there is a chance for India to go after their spinners, in particular Shoaib Bashir who made an impressive start to his Test career when the two teams played last year. But Gill said, India are not targeting anyone in particular. “Our batting order is relatively inexperienced and their bowling attack is relatively inexperienced. So I think there’s a good balance there. And we want to play each game or each session as it is. We don’t want to, or maybe you might feel, when we are batting this certain bowler could be bowling well. It might well be Bashir, who is bowling well on a given day and we might feel like ‘okay, we might not need to take too many risks against him’. So it’s all about what’s happening in that situation or in that condition,” Gill said.
Gill said before heading into the series, he reviewed India’s last two series in England which they lost 4-1 in 2018 and 2-2 in 2022. “I looked at the previous couple of series because that’s relatively more relevant, more closer to how we are going to play or to how the England team plays. And that’s what I looked at. I think it’s very important to take that confidence into this series because I personally feel that we had two very good series. We might have not won those series, but there were a lot of positives that we took from that series,” Gill added.
