IND vs AUS: Is Gill’s poor white ball form a result of great expectations?

The confidence of Indian fans in Shubman Gill’s abilities as a three-format batter received yet another jolt when he failed to fire in the second T20I against Australia in Melbourne, a match the Men in Blue lost by four wickets. It has been a dismal tour so far for the newly appointed ODI captain and deputy in the shortest format to Suryakumar Yadav, raising whispers about whether the pressure of expectations is taking a toll.

After getting a start in the rain-spoiled first T20I in Canberra on Wednesday, Gill again failed to get on top of a Josh Hazlewood delivery on the latter’s hard length, miscuing it to Mitchell Marsh at mid-off for five.

Social media was quick to latch onto his lack of runs in the demanding tour so far, seeing as he could manage only 43 runs as captain in the three ODIs (10, 9 and 24) and just 85 in five matches across the two white-ball formats in Australia so far.

‘’Unpopular opinion but Jaiswal is 100% better than overrated Gill,’’ wrote a fan on his X handle. Harsh as it may sound, the current lack of runs will act as a reality check for the prince-in-waiting of Indian batting, who had a phenomenal series with 774 runs in June-July as the new captain in the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy.

However, he couldn’t replicate the same fluent form since making his return to the shortest format of the game in Asia Cup in September, with an aggregate of 169 runs from nine innings.

A closer look at Gill’s efforts shows the perils of the modern day batter aspiring to excel in all formats — he looks confident, middles the ball well, but fails to convert good starts into sizeable contributions. Prolific he may have been in the last IPL (650 runs), but Gill’s style of batsmanship is better off with a wait-and-watch approach as the in-form Abhishek Sharma, the world's no.1 T20 batter and a childhood friend, is perfectly capable of taking the pressure off him.

Pitted against Hazlewood & Co. on a typical MCG track, Abhishek stood tall among the ruins, with a combative 37-ball-68 thanks to a range of outrageous shots including slashes, check drives and lofted strokes on the offside to race to a 23-ball half-century in his maiden appearance at the iconic venue, while others made a beeline for the dugout. His stand of 56 with Harshit Rana (35 off 33 balls), promoted to no. 7, allowed India to cross the 100-run mark but a 125-run total would never have been enough.

As many as nine batters failed to reach double digits — something which will certainly crease Gautam Gambhir’s eyebrows ahead of the third T20I on Sunday.