Shubman Gill’s Day 3 on-field tactics are puzzling

India cricket team captain Shubman Gill made quite a few questionable decisions on Day 3 of the IND vs WI 2nd Test. After staying firm in the driver’s seat for majority of the sessions, the hosts were put on the back-foot after enforcing a follow-on as the Windies were put into bat again on being bundled out for 248 runs. At the end of the day, Shai Hope (66*) and John Campbell (87*) helped WI finish at 173/2 and trailing India by just 97 runs, largely because of Gill’s decisions.

Will Gill’s tactical blunders cost India the IND vs WI 2nd Test?

The first blunder to be committed by captain Gill was to enforce follow-on when his bowlers had already bowled 81 overs. Kuldeep Yadav bowled 26.5 overs in the 1st innings while Jadeja, Sundar, Bumrah and Siraj finished with 19. 13, 14 and 9 respectively. While the aggressive approach is much appreciated, it seems to have back-fired on the Indians in the 2nd innings as they managed to get just 2 wickets in the 3rd session.

Gill’s second blunder that seems to come to the fore is that of Nitish Kumar Reddy’s absence. Despite assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate indicating before the match that the team wants to groom him as an all-rounder, he was given zero overs in the first and the second innings. Instead, the spinners along with Siraj & Bumrah were used again and again in the 2nd innings.

Understandably, Bumrah wasn’t asked to bowl right at the start of the 2nd innings as he had bowled a quite a bit of overs towards the end of the 1st innings. Siraj and Jadeja resumed the proceedings for India, with the former drawing first blood by getting rid of Chanderpaul thanks to a good catch by Gill. A bowling change in the 15th over saw Sundar clean up Athanaze and that was the last laugh that India had on Day 3.

What followed was persistence with spin where neither Kuldeep, Jadeja or Sundar found any success. After being kept out of the attack for quite long, Bumrah was brought into the attack in the 33rd over, after the drinks break post Tea. It yielded very little result as he just bowled four overs and conceded 9 runs.

To top it all, a mystery spinner was introduced in the final over of the day in the form of Yashasvi Jaiswal. Now, if all the main bowlers were tired and if Gill wanted to get a new option into the attack, then why couldn’t it have been NKR, who hasn’t bowled a single over in the game? Is he injured? These are some questions that need to be answered by the Indian captain.