India's graph in Test cricket has gone down lately.
Earlier this month, it was reported that Gill has proposed a key idea for the betterment of red-ball team. As per the report, the captain recommended the board to organise a 15-day camps for Indian players prior to every Test series.
Notably, Indian players didn’t get enough time to prepare for the home Test assignments against West Indies and South Africa last year. The two-Test series against West Indies got underway on October 2 and many players reached India just four days ahead of the campaign after playing Asia Cup 2025 in UAE.
Similarly, Gill and several other Test players arrived in India from Australia just four days ahead of the South Africa series in November. The Proteas inflicted a 2-0 clean sweep on India, winning Test matches in Kolkata and Guwahati.
“One of the suggestions that I was very keen on is, if you would see in the last two Test series that we played, we didn’t have that much time to prepare," Gill said in a pre-series press conference ahead of New Zealand ODIs.
“It’s not easy playing in India, and playing another match in a different country on the fourth day, especially when you are travelling on long tours. Even if we had won the series against South Africa, it still wouldn’t have made that much of a difference, because we know we need to prepare well to be able to win Test matches all over the world."
“Preparation for me is really big, and I don’t think that we had that much time to prepare when we came back from Australia, or even after the Asia Cup when we played the West Indies series. It’s important to at least have some bit of preparation, especially when changing from white-ball format to red-ball. I think we’ll take some action and we’ll keep it in mind to be able to prepare well before the start of any red-ball series."
India's schedule in 2026 is jam-packed with many white-ball series on the cards. Hence, it seems to be a difficult task to organise preparatory camps.
When asked what it means for multi-format players, Gill replied: “Maybe it would be easier to have a looser calendar. I don’t think in 2016-2018, there was a time when if you’re coming from another country, you’re playing a match on the fourth day. Maybe it’s easier to play a match on the 10th day. Maybe it’s easier to play a match on the 12th day. It gives a bit of rest for the players as well and gives you that time to prepare and feel confident for the next series."