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India Test captain Shubman Gill has broken a plethora of records in the second Test match against England, which helped the visitors to seize control in the second clash of the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy 2025 by the end of Day 2. After smashing a mammoth first-innings total of 587, India had England reeling at 77/3, a position of dominance largely scripted by Gill’s epic 269, the highest-ever score by a visiting Asian captain in England. And for that knock, the young skipper credits head coach Gautam Gambhir.
Gill, who is leading India for the first Time in Tests, has notched up his second consecutive hundred in his debut series as captain on Day 1 at Edgbaston. Gill smashed the bowlers to all over the ground, making their decision to bowl first on a flat deck look increasingly questionable. The young batter's double hundred made him the first Asian captain to score 200 or more in a Test in England. He also finished with his career-best first-class score of 269, surpassing his previous best of 268, made for Punjab against Tamil Nadu in the 2018–19 season.
After smashing his double ton, Gill admitted that it wasn’t as easy as he made it look. Speaking to former India cricketer Deep Dasgupta at stumps on Day 2, he revealed that in his initial stretch of 40 runs, scored during the second session on Day 1, he struggled to find boundaries. It was a chat with Gambhir during at the Tea break that helped unlock his rhythm and triggered him to play the historic knock.
"Yesterday, when I went out to bat, which came around lunchtime on Day 1, at Tea, by which I had scored around 35-40, I spoke to GG bhai, telling him that I found it difficult getting boundaries and I was missing out on a lot of opportunities. The ball, by then, had turned soft, but I could not score runs as freely as in the first Test. But I had just one aim that I would not let go of it. If there was one learning for me from the previous game, it was that there could be a collapse at any time in the game. So my mindset was to make as few errors as possible," he said.
Gill, who captained Gujarat Titans to the playoffs, was seen preparing for the England Test series by practising with the red ball during the IPL season in Ahmedabad.
"Because the IPL setup, the white-ball setup, and what I wanted to do there were very different. So I thought that if I started my preparation from then itself, it would give me an edge when the time for the series came," he said.
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