Not baited, not beaten: Shubman Gill shows the way

At one point during the post-Lunch stupor that was the second session of the opening day at Edgbaston, Ben Stokes dramatically ushered his off-side fielders to move into catching positions. While point stayed put, mid-off, cover and extra-cover all moved in. The passage of play just before had reduced the Hollies Stand to a mild hum, but even they now perked up to the possibilities of this novelty and created a crescendo of noise as the England captain sprinted up. It was a good length ball on off-stump honing into pads, just the kind England have been targeting Shubman Gill with continuously. India's captain nimbly moved forward to defend under his eye. And as if to underscore his control over proceedings, he even held his pose for effect.

It summed up the tone of the day. England tried theatre, Gill responded with stillness. They invited rashness, Gill offered restraint. They targeted the LBW, he was up to the task. The Indian captain had walked in just before Lunch, and from that moment till stumps, refused to be baited or rushed.

Gill's seventh Test hundred, his second in two games of this series and as captain, was the kind of innings that may not pass the Bazball eye test. But in context, it was a necessary act of assertion, to show the way that there's no one 'natural style' of playing. It took him 125 balls to even get to 50 with just five boundaries hit in that passage. The 100 came off the 199th ball, making it his slowest ton in the format. But it was also, statistically, his second-best hundred in terms of control percentages. In fact, as per Cricviz, no batter has ever recorded a lower false shot percentage than Gill's 4% in a Test hundred in England since tracking data has been available.

Yes, this was a benign pitch. The surface had even less to offer than Headingley. Gill walked out to bat at a reasonable platform of 95 for 2. But only a couple of hours before, he'd made a pair of interesting selection calls, prioritising batting depth over bowling potency that Jasprit Bumrah and Kuldeep Yadav provided. Two of the six specialist batters he picked were already dismissed and as Leeds had proved, even 471 wasn't enough.

The real challenge ahead of Gill wasn't technical. It was to not be drawn in - not by England's fields, not by the energy of the disapproving crowd, nor by the temptation to force the pace or fall to unforced errors as they'd done in Leeds.

Here too, there were avoidable lapses. Yashasvi Jaiswal had his own second century of the series, seemingly tied up before feathering an edge while attempting a slash outside off-stump. Rishabh Pant, Gill's deputy, was barely under pressure but fell on the wrong side of the risk-reward balance when his attempted takedown of Shoaib Bashir found long-on, curiously placed almost straight back behind a mid-on. An over later, the first of the two all-rounders Gill brought in - Nitish Reddy - shouldered arms and was bowled by Chris Woakes with India on 211 for 5, very far away from what might be a competitive first innings score here.

Gill stayed and was determined not to rise to the bait. Stokes made life tricky with constant tactical changes, imaginative traps, and sharp fielding control. There was always something brewing. At one point he had a 7-2 off-side field to Gill that dried up all boundaries there. Then he switched it around to 3-6 and bowled short. Angles varied over and around the wicket, men dropped into odd catching positions, waiting for that one misjudgement.

It never came. Gill even timed his counter perfectly but without ceding control. Right after England tried to push for another wicket following Nitish's. The ball was now 62 overs old. The next 32 balls brought 27 runs and another partnership was underway. It was a lifting of pressure - on Jadeja, on the scoreboard, and on himself. Then, again, the tempo dropped. Between 75 and 90, he went back into run-milking mode, until Joe Root was brought on to quickly go through the formality of rushing through the 80th over at the end of which the second new ball would be made available with 20 mins to go in the day's play.

Gill picked his moment. With a packed leg-side field, he swept Root twice, both times clean, both times splitting the wall. It brought him to his hundred. The helmet came off and from underneath emerged a roar. It wasn't performative, it was raw, a release, the first visible crack in his composure all day after following through on all that he had preached the day before.

While there had been several batting mis-steps, Gill singled out his own dismissal for 147 attempting to slog Bashir in the first innings at Headingley for opening the door for England's comeback. He had demanded greater accountability and concentration from his teammates and proceeded to show the way too.

Gill is a modern batter, adept at all three formats. It isn't easy to contain bowling one side to him but at no point did he lose his focus despite England's attempts to unsettle him. It was a lesson he learnt previously in Vizag last year, the only other hundred of his with greater control. There he faced a similar web with Stokes getting his spinners to bowl round the stumps to him with six fielders on the leg. Gill forced a release by playing a reverse sweep and fell for 103. It was a dismissal that brought England back into the contest in the third innings and provoked a lot of conversation and soul searching in Gill.

Here, straight after the landmark he hunkered down once more as the second new ball brought with it its own challenges late in the evening. But Gill and Jadeja, firm in their shapes and light on their feet, closed out the final phase. By stumps, India were 310 for 5 - not dominant, but resilient.

There is still a long way to go, and Gill will have to bat even longer on Day 2 with that reinforced lower order if India are to bat the opposition out of the game this time. The Bumrah-Kuldeep omissions will be judged later and over four innings. Whatever storms lie ahead, they began this Test with questions swirling, but their captain has refused to be beaten. Or baited.