Shubman Gill’s century the most controlled on record as India defy England

Gill would have been forgiven for leaving Edgbaston on Tuesday with his head in a spin.

In his pre-match news conference he fended question after question about his team selection this week – mostly about whether his star bowler Jasprit Bumrah would play.

The travelling India press pack is large and unrelenting. Gill struggled to sate them. The message was muddled. His batting in Birmingham 24 hours later was not.

Having spoken about wanting to compartmentalise batting and captaincy before the series, Gill strolled to the middle and played an innings with a false shot percentage of just 3.5%. The average in England is 12%.

It makes it the most controlled ton on these shores since analysts CricViz began recording such statistics in 2006.

England run-getting legends like Sir Alastair Cook, Joe Root and Kevin Pietersen were never this controlled using the same metric. Nor were modern-day greats Rahul Dravid, Ricky Ponting and Kumar Sangakkara, who have all peeled off glorious hundreds on these shores in the last 20 years.

Gill’s innings contained just two outside edges off Chris Woakes – both before he had reached 20 – and an inside edge to Brydon Carse that thwarted an England lbw review.

There were three more false shots – any edge, play and miss or stroke mishit – to Woakes and two to Ben Stokes. Otherwise that was it. As close to perfection as anyone has been in recent years in England.

The pitch was the second easiest on record on a first day at Edgbaston – number one was in 2017 against West Indies, in case you wondered – but Gill responded with the most controlled of knocks.

England were not going to stop India’s leader from raising his bat and celebrating with that now-familiar bow.