In yesterday’s match between PBKS and GT, Shubman Gill was 17 off 9 balls in the powerplay. Gill’s strike rate was around 200 despite batting till the last over of Gujarat Titans’ chase. This has been the problem with Gill’s batting in white-ball cricket, especially in T20s.
Legendary Indian opener Virender Sehwag pointed out Gill’s strike rate and said he should not think about reaching personal milestones and instead start treating the game according to situations.
“He scored 67 off 49 balls but when did he reach his fiifty? He reached his fifty off maybe 41-42 balls so in 7-8 balls he has scored 17 more runs. The accelration came there, after he had reached his fifty. If even that had not happened then GT would have chasing maybe 17 instead off 7 in the last over,” Sehwag said on Cricbuzz.
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“You can’t think let me score a fifty and we will anyway win the match. This is cricket. The moment you think about your own performance (instead of the team), you will get a tight slap from cricket. You can’t think like that. If he had showed the same intent and played at close to a strike rate of 200 when he was nearing fifty then he could have reached his milestone a lot earlier and save more deliveries for his team,” Sehwag added.
The disappointment in captain Hardik Pandya’s words in the post-match presentation was also evident.
“To be very honest I would not appreciate for the game to go this deep. There was definitely a lot for us to learn from this game… It would have been a tough pill to swallow if the game had gone the other side. I would like to finish the game earlier, not a big fan of taking it to the last over,” he said.