Tried to bat like I used to in my childhood: Shubman Gill after masterful double ton
Gill struck 269 off 387 balls to become the first Indian and Asian captain to score a double hundred in a Test match in England as India posted a massive 587 on day two of the second Test here on Thursday.
He had scored a hundred in the series-opener in Leeds.
Asked if he worked on his technique ahead of the series, Gill told the host broadcaster: "I think at the end of the IPL and before this series, I worked a lot on this."
"I mainly worked on my initial movement and my setup. Before this, I felt my batting was going well. I was scoring 30-35-40 runs consistently in Test matches. But at some point, I was missing that peak concentration time. A lot of people say that when you focus too much, you sometimes miss your peak time.
"So, in this series, I tried to go back to my basics. I tried to bat like I used to in my childhood. I didn't think about having reached 35-40 runs or about playing long innings. I just wanted to enjoy my batting."
With his brilliant knock, Gill went past the legendary Sunil Gavaskar's 221 at The Oval in 1979 to post the highest individual score by an Indian batter on English soil.
Gill's return to form comes after a lukewarm Test tour of Australia earlier this year, where he managed a highest score of just 31 across three Tests.
"Sometimes, when you aren't scoring runs fluently, you stop enjoying your batting. You focus too much on the need to score runs. I felt I had lost that in my batting. I was so focused that I wasn't enjoying my batting as much."
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