Gill combines beauty with responsibility in pursuit of greatness

The finest batters possess a quality which cannot quite be reduced to technique. Technique may explain the straightness of the drive, the stillness of the head, and the balance at the moment of impact. It does not explain why the whole thing should seem beautiful.

Shubman Gill has that beauty. Yet beauty, by itself, is not enough. Sport is not choreography. The beauty matters because something is at stake. On Wednesday, it was 406.

There is a particular responsibility in a big chase. Someone has to stay long enough for the number to become ordinary. Gill understands that responsibility and seems to want it. Like Virat Kohli, he appears to relish the challenge of being the set batter who carries the innings through.

Last year in England, after India lost the first Test at Leeds despite his first-innings 147, Gill responded in the next Test by batting 549 balls for 430 across the match.

Here, with the series up for grabs, he assumed that responsibility again. He turned the chase of 406 into an exhibition of how compact and expansive can coexist, how violence may be contained within grace.

His wrists worked with extraordinary delicacy. He cut late, flicked behind square, and punched through cover. He drove full-faced and straight. When Alzarri Joseph sent down a short ball at serious pace, Gill answered with his compact short-arm jab. He used his feet repeatedly, stepping out to Roston Chase and Keemo Paul, getting to the pitch of the ball and sending it over square-leg and cow corner.

Gill had no grand strategy, just a succession of modest propositions: 75-80 in the PowerPlay, no wickets; 200-210 by 25 overs; survive the new ball; exploit the older ball; remember the short side. India made 92 without loss in the first 10 overs and then exceeded Gill’s next checkpoint, too.

He had already spent 50 overs in the field when he began. He then batted through all 43.3 overs of the chase. There was skill, certainly, but also discipline, appetite, and fitness. The innings had the rare quality of seeming effortless while demanding everything.

The numbers were spectacular: unbeaten 223 from 133 balls, his second ODI double century and India’s highest successful chase. But numbers can flatten the texture of an innings. They cannot quite describe the impression of a batter who seems to have discovered that the shortest distance between himself and greatness is simply to keep batting.