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Shubman Gill offers a solution to BCCI for India's Test revival: ‘Need to prepare well to be able to win’
Shubman Gill advocates for dedicated preparation time for India's Test cricket to enhance performance and reduce stress from format transitions.
Shubman Gill wants India’s Test cricket to be treated like a proper project, not a last-minute preparation.
In a recent press conference, the Indian captain revealed that he has already flagged a key fix to the BCCI: to build dedicated red-ball preparation time into the schedule, especially when the team is jumping between formats and countries.
“One of the suggestions that I was very keen on is, if you would see in the last two Test series that we played, we didn’t have much time to prepare,” said Gill.
His core argument is about turnaround stress, the kind that doesn’t show up on scorecards but hits technique, bodies, and planning. He underlined how brutal it is to finish one assignment and be expected to be match-ready somewhere else almost immediately. “It’s not easy playing in India and playing another match in a different country on the fourth day. Especially when you are travelling on long tours,” said Gill.
He also made a pretty sharp point about result masking problems: even a series win wouldn’t have changed what he sees as the real issue, India need better lead-in time to win consistently across conditions.
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“And yes, I feel even if we would have won the series against South Africa, it still wouldn’t have made that much of a difference because we know we need to prepare well to be able to win Test matches all over the world.”
The calendar squeeze he is talking about is real. India’s Asia Cup campaign ended on September 28, 2025, and the West Indies series at home began on October 2 - a quick pivot from T20 cricket into the longest format.
“And preparation for me is really big, and I didn’t think that we have that much time to prepare when we came back from Australia or even after the Asia Cup when we played the West Indies series,” said the Indian Test captain.
That is why, as reported, Shubman Gill has pushed for 15-day red-ball camps before every Test series, with the CCI exploring ways to institutionalise it. “So, this was one of the things I was very keen on, and I think we’ll take some action and we’ll keep it in mind to be able to prepare well before the start of any red ball series.”
