New Delhi [India], July 7 : Former cricketer Yograj Singh spilt the beans about his son Yuvraj's reaction to captain Shubman Gill's blistering performance with the bat, which steered India to its first Test win at Edgbaston.
Gill's breathtaking display with the bat left England reeling across the five days of play in the second game of the five-match series. In a captivating Test, the Indian batters dictated the game's flow, ending their decades-long winless run at Edgbaston. The Indian Test captain left the spectators enchanted with his refined strokeplay and knack of scoring runs in both innings.
Yograj revealed that he called Yuvraj, who serves as Gill's mentor, after India's thumping 336-run victory and congratulated him for the 25-year-old's success. However, according to Yograj, his son, praised Gill for the hard yards that he put in to improve himself and his technique, while he just served as a support system.
"I called him yesterday, and I congratulated him. He replied, 'No, he has also worked hard'. If there were another coach, then he would have taken the credit. But he didn't do that. He said Shubman has worked hard. I am just the support system," Yograj told ANI.
Gill took the onus of pushing India's score, especially after his side endured two collapses at the tail in Leeds. He played the captain's knock and broke records for fun en route to a swashbuckling 269(387). In his second turn, when a belligerent approach was the need of the hour, Gill tantalised England's inexperienced pace attack with 161(162), scoring almost at a strike rate of 100.
After India restored parity in the series at 1-1, Gill underscored the tweaks that he made in his technique and said in a press conference while speaking to reporters, "There were some things that I started working on. I think I started working at the time when the IPL was ending. The perception of technique and people, I think, changes after every series, after every match. We, as a team or as a player, do not focus much on what people are saying about you."
With 430 runs across both innings, Gill has the second-highest aggregate of runs in a single Test, behind England's Graham Gooch, who had an output of 456 runs after scoring 333 and 123 against India at Lord's back in 1990.
"It changes in every match. But the important thing is that whenever you are going to a match, what your team thinks about you, what your players think about you, if your teammates think about you, if they have confidence in you, then that is more important for me, rather than what people outside are thinking about me, or what they think about my technique," he added.
With the series perfectly poised at 1-1 after the conclusion of the first two Tests, India and England will fight for the right to take the lead in the third contest of the series, which is scheduled to kick off on Thursday.