Shubman Gill’s Lord’s meltdown was no Virat Kohli swagger: Deserves a 'slap on the wrist' and a mirror

Shubman Gill’s outburst can’t be condoned but should be seen as a one-off, not proof he’s turned from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde.

KL Rahul says he has seen this ‘fired up’ side previously. Abhay Sharma, who went on tour as India Under-19 coach to England nearly eight years ago when he was far from a household name, is impressed by his ability to remain untouched by dizzying success and numbing failure.

England's Zak Crawley clashes with India's Shubman Gill (AFP)

Shubman Gill has had an outstanding tour of England so far, but an as-yet unrevealed, and hardly flattering, side surfaced towards the tense final stages of Sunday’s third day of the third Test at Lord’s.

When India were bowled out in their first innings for 387, leaving the first-innings scores tied, it left England with six tricky minutes – two overs – to see off before stumps. For any set of openers, that is absolutely a no-win, nothing-to-gain situation, so it wasn’t surprising to see Zak Crawley, on strike to Jasprit Bumrah, dawdling between deliveries.

Crawley, who has had a miserable tour with the bat, and Ben Duckett came to the middle late, trying to ensure that India only got one over of bowling as the England second innings began 90 seconds behind schedule. Then, the right-hander pulled out of his stance once, enraging Bumrah and leaving tensions simmering just beneath the surface. Off the fifth ball, Bumrah rapped Crawley on his right glove, prompting the batter to turn towards the dressing room and call for the physio. That’s when Gill, manning the catching cordon behind the stumps, lost his shirt.

Walking towards Crawley, India’s captain could be clearly heard saying over the stump mic, ‘Grow some f***ing balls’, followed by a gesture that can’t be decent in any forum. It was completely out of character because Gill is nothing if not a composed, controlled, well-mannered young man. It also didn’t behove the captain of the team to act thus.

Why Shubman Gill’s Lord’s reaction may haunt him later

At the time of writing, Gill was yet to receive a summons from Richie Richardson, the former West Indian captain who is the ICC match referee. Maybe that will change. Perhaps Gill does deserve a slap on the wrist, maybe even a little more than that, for his uncharacteristic outburst. Or maybe his otherwise impeccable disciplinary record will come to his rescue. Either way, when Gill looks back on this episode with a calm head, he will admit to himself that he should have kept his emotions in better check, that there is no place for abuse of this nature on the cricket field.

For now, this must be lumped in the one-off category, because there is no recorded evidence of a transgression of this sort from the 25-year-old. Sometimes, in the heat of the battle, one does get a little carried away and it is easy to see why India were riled by what clearly were delaying, stalling, time-wasting tactics by Crawley. Umpires Reiffel and Saikat ought to have been more proactive right from the start of the English second innings and sounded out a stern warning to Crawley but just because they didn’t do so doesn’t give Gill the license to mouth off at an accepted if somewhat underhanded tactic embraced by the England opener.

India have had leaders of various hues in the recent past. Few have been more abrasive than Virat Kohli, who flipped the bird to the crowd on his first tour of Australia in 2011-12, or Sourav Ganguly, who thought nothing of whipping off his shirt and furiously waving it above his head when his team won the NatWest Trophy final against England in 2002, also at Lord’s. But there have also been less visibly aggressive skippers including Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Rohit Sharma, whose amusing if unprintable one-liners were directed more towards his teammates than his opponents.

Kohli has carried the reputation of being brash and aggressive from his Under-19 days – who can forget his animated reactions in the immediacy of his boys winning the World Cup final against South Africa in Kuala Lumpur in 2008 – but that’s not a label that has been affixed to Gill. To infer that he has already drawn a leaf from the Kohli playbook will be premature and unfair. It’s possible that even if he had not been the captain, Gill might not have taken kindly to Crawley’s dawdle but as the head of the outfit, he is expected to set higher, better, more palatable standards.

But lest one should forget, this is only Gill’s third Test in charge and perhaps he deserves to be cut some slack. His outburst can’t be condoned, but for now, it must be viewed as an isolated incident which shouldn’t be used as clinching evidence that he has irreversibly gone from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde.