Shubman Gill and the art of constructing an inning: process, patience, and play.

It’s fitting that Kohli was with him for his first Test century at home, his second overall, because it was the modern-day legend who the youngster from Punjab would follow in his early teens.
As a four-year-old, Gill fell in love with the game in the village of Chak Kherewala in Punjab’s Fazilka district, hitting plastic balls thrown down a long corridor by his landlord father. Then, on a firm pitch in their own backyard.
In fact, a shot that caught the attention of cricket fans in Ahmedabad on Saturday may have originated with the plastic-ball days. Gill would unfurl the gasp-worthy short-arm jab whenever Australia’s Mitch Starc or Cameron Green were fractionally short.
In addition, his 235-ball 128 is his longest Test innings to date, as well as the first time he has faced more than 200 balls. The significance of the duration is best captured by a telling interaction between Gill and India’s coach Rahul Dravid earlier this year, which the Indian cricket board released on video.
Gill questions Dravid, who has known him since his days as India U-19 coach, about the changes in his game over the years.Dravid discusses Gill’s passion for batting before focusing on the most significant change he has seen in the last six months: the art of how to construct your innings. Gill stands like a schoolboy, solemn and attentive.
source: the cricket driveUnder a scorching sun, that art of construction was on display in Ahmedabad. By lunchtime, the Australians had wisely decided to close the run-tap, packing the leg-side with seven fielders and exploiting Gill’s patience.
It was not only a test of Gill’s determination, but also, as he would later reveal, a test of his game plan. In the few years he was out of the Test team, his personal assessment of where he went wrong was that once he was settled in a knock, he would become defensive and retreat into a shell.
That is the art of constructing innings, the ability to ride the ebbs and flows of the game, and by the end, even if the pitch wasn’t particularly challenging, Gill had won the mental game and announced to anyone living under a rock up until now that he is ready to be the new shining star in the Indian batting galaxy.