How Gill turned preparation into perfection

For 77 minutes, Shubman Gill stayed tethered inside a tiny, rectangular patch on Friday, putting on a pure and pristine show of stroke-making that sealed a spot in an IPL final. But on that patch, strip No.4 of the New Chandigarh stadium, Gill had also spent several minutes the previous evening: analysing, visualising, familiarising.

Now, Gill's obsession with net sessions is well documented. He once famously arrived before the team, just recovered from dengue, to hit the nets before their 2023 World Cup match against Pakistan. The eagerness wasn't any different in Mullanpur, part of his home state, and the venue for Qualifier 2.

Gill was reeling, not by a mosquito bite this time, but a rare top-order implosion to RCB in Qualifier 1. Out for 2, his lowest score all season, Gill travelled to Mullanpur with a mixed bag of scores at the venue: a couple of 30s, a duck and 1.

His first act on the pitch was a controversial coin flip: Gill, feeling hard done by, said the Titans would have liked to bat first too. And why not: they had lost each of the last seven times they tried chasing a 210+ total. The eventual target was five more.

Gill's first strike flew past the first innings' hero, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi at square leg, an opening jab at Jofra Archer. Second ball, a stray freebie past his leg-stump, was dutifully flicked to the long-leg fence. These weren't just random opening salvos: attacking inside the first ten balls has been vital to Gill's approach this season. It was also an early one-up against Archer, who had plucked him thrice in seven T20 innings.

Gill: First ten balls of an IPL innings, year by year

His next over, Archer pulled out the short ball once more. RR's batters had been subjected to enough of those in the first innings: 30 out of the 36 Powerplay balls had been back of length or shorter. But Archer's own riposte fell flat on two counts: Gill is an excellent short-ball player, and the pitch – treated to a heavy roller – had the ball coming on much nicer. Archer's first two overs gave 29 runs and fetched nothing.

Six overs in, and the timeout in effect, Gill stood next to Matthew Hayden, getting a rigorous, hasty rub of the neck muscles, hoping to prevent any relapse of his recent injury. A day before, Gill had stood across Hayden, separated by the green mesh, interrupting his own nets session for a chat. That stint had already seen him revise some of the shots he would end up playing, including a frame-by-frame replica of a booming drive to Brijesh Sharma.

The Royals, failing to plug the runs, looked towards Yash Punja and Tushar Deshpande, but inexplicably held back Archer for too long. Gill wasn't complaining: Deshpande bumped in another short one, Gill smashed it with an imperious pull. For a boy who grew up robotically punishing short balls off a charpoi at home, these were fodder for Gill.

For those who had spotted, Gill had a rare misstep against a similar short ball the previous night. Punjab pacer Gurnoor Brar had managed to find a top edge off Gill's bat, surprising him with sharp lift. But Deshpande doesn't have Brar's physicality.

Desperate for a breakthrough, Parag turned to Ravindra Jadeja, nursing a tennis elbow on his non-bowling arm. Gill worsened his pain with a waltz down the ground and a thump into the stands. Jadeja changed his angle and hurled one with a wider angle, but Gill's buttery flow swiped it behind square for another six.

The feet continued to dance against Punja too, his hands subtly adjusting to different lengths to play against the turn. These were smooth cuts of a sharp blade through silk, contrasting the rough-hewn cuts from Sooryavanshi's bat earlier.

With 59 needed in seven, Archer still didn't get a holler, with Nandre Burger being summoned to try and pry out a semblance of an opportunity. A day before, Gill had two GT left-armers Arshad Khan and Luke Wood bowling to him from over the wicket, looking to adjust to the slant. Once, Arshad angled a peach past Gill's outside edge. Another slow, short-pitched ball made Gill turn awkwardly, losing his grip and shape.

When Burger repeated a similar one in the game, Gill masterfully adjusted his pull, placing it superbly for four.

It could well have been a ten-wicket cruise, but Sudharsan's bat did an encore leap on the stumps, leaving Gill devastated. He succumbed to his knees, placing himself by the pitch, head bowed in disbelief.

But the next time his head bowed, it was helmetless, acknowledging the roaring crowd after reaching a near-perfect century. He raised his bat again when he walked off six balls later, having almost carried his team all the way. Sooryavanshi was the first one to greet him as he exited.

"I wasn't looking to hit the ball too hard," Gill would later say. "It was just about seeing the ball land, see my zones and try to adjust there".

Gill had probably marked those zones in his head when he and Nehra walked around the pitch the previous evening, mimicking pull shots, standing at different lengths, and getting a sense of the turf.

In two days, the turf switches to Ahmedabad one final time this season. That's home away from home for Gill. He's already the first captain to hit a hundred in IPL playoffs. This one got them a timely redemption. A repeat could seal the title.