Shubman Gill | India Player | India Vs. Pakistan | ICC Champions Trophy | Press Conference Pre-Match

VIDEO COURTESY: ICC
Shubman Gill- India pre-match press conference, 22 Feb '25
[Reporter:]

Shubman, you've been in terrific form in ODIs, but after getting the vice captaincy, I think it's only improved your batting. So, responsibility has got the best out of you?

[Shubman Gill:]

Sir, I don't think vice captaincy has changed anything. I'm still, when I'm batting out there, I want to still play as a batsman because I feel that's when - or that's what brings the best out of me. So, whenever I'm batting out there, I'm just playing however I would play, irrespective of if I'm the vice-captain or not.

[Reporter:]

With so much spotlight on this match, India-Pakistan, how do you see this match? You know, the mindset of the team, and how do you go into this?

[Shubman Gill:]

It doesn't change anything for us, honestly. We play every match to win the match and this is no different for us. And this is how we prepare for any match that we play. So that's how we are going to prepare for this one as well.

[Reporter:]

You batted the most here last day. Tell us a little about this wicket. Is it that because the dew is not falling, as you are moving forward in the innings, the ball is gripping and it is getting difficult to bat as the match progresses?

[Shubman Gill:]

In the last match, the dew didn't come that much. So definitely, when the dew doesn't come under lights, it is not easy to bat on slow wickets. It's not easy to rotate the strike. I think, whatever matches we play here, the key will be that whichever team rotates well in the middle overs – between the 11th to the 40th over, has a better chance of winning.

[Reporter:]

Rohit has been saying all along that they want to continue the brand of cricket that India has played during the World Cup, the high risk, high gain kind of cricket. But looking at this wicket, do you see - first of all, was it surprising to see this kind of, because we have played a lot of cricket over here, this wicket looks a bit slow. And also, on this point of pitch, what is the ideal approach as a batting unit for you guys?

[Shubman Gill:]

The ideal approach on any wicket is first to assess the conditions and see how the wicket is playing. And generally, when you play, we were lucky that we went to field first so we got a bit of an idea how the wicket is playing and as a batsman your skill is renowned by knowing how well you can assess any situation or condition that you are playing in and that's what we try to do as batsmen.

Definitely we want to play aggressive and positive cricket but that also depends on - the score would be different on every wicket that we play. A 300 on this wicket or 280 on this wicket would be a very good score for us or if the wicket plays any differently we might get 350 or 360 runs. We don't have any particular target set in our mind. We usually go out there, see how the wicket is and then try to get 15-20 runs more than what the par score we think that is on that wicket.

[Reporter:]

I think you've got 8 one day 100s, one of which is a double century. But looking at that last innings, given the magnitude of it being India's first Champions Trophy match, it's a condensed format, there are 3 matches. The conditions, you already mentioned, how much personal satisfaction did that innings give you? It was a different situation, you had to recalibrate, not a big target but a tricky situation, wickets kept falling. How much pleasure did that give you as compared to the other 7 hundreds - including a double?

[Shubman Gill:]

Definitely one of my most satisfying innings that I've played as you said the Champions Trophy format is like this, margin of error is generally very less, if there's a single bad match - then there’s a lot of pressure on you, then all the matches become do and die, must win games. In the middle overs – for about 8 to 10 overs that we faced some pressure as a batting group, but it’s very important that in such a phase you save your wickets, and not take more risks because the target was not that high. If we were chasing 270-280, we would have played a little differently. Even if the wickets had fallen, we would have had to take chances. But because the target was not that high on that wicket. The 8-10 overs in the middle, .

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