Batting legend Sunil Gavaskar didn’t filter his words while criticizing Shubman Gill after the latter gifted away his wicket on Day 2 of the opening Test against England at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Hyderabad.

Gill did a good job to bat till stumps on the first day and also survived the difficult first half hour on the second day. However, the right-hander perished while attempting an adventurous stroke against debutant English spinner Tom Hartley.

In the fifth ball of the 35th over, Hartley tossed one up on Shubman’s pads and the Indian No.3 went for a shovel without getting to the pitch of the ball. As it turned out, Gill was caught at mid-wicket by Ben Duckett for 23 off 66 balls.

"What kind of a shot was he looking to play? One can understand if he was looking to play it in the air but it was just a badly executed on-drive. He did all the hard work and then played a shot like that," said Gavaskar in commentary.

Former India head coach Ravi Shastri, who was also on-air at the time, credited England skipper Ben Stokes for persisting with Tom Hartley.

"Credit to Ben Stokes. He has shown faith in Hartley. A lot of captains might have wanted to make a change, but he has stuck by him," Shastri said.

Notably, Shubman Gill is yet to leave a big mark in the longest format of the game. Before this game, he represented India in 20 Tests, scoring 1040 runs at an average of 30.59 with two hundreds and four half-centuries.

Shubman started his Test career as an opener but after Cheteshwar Pujara’s ouster from the side, he has been batting at No. 3 for India. Gill registered scores of 2, 26, 36 and 10 in the recently held two-Test series in South Africa. Overall, he has scored 189 runs from nine Test innings at No. 3 with the best score of 47.

For a batter of Shubman Gill’s caliber, such numbers are worrisome and he needs to pull up his socks quickly else his place in the Test side will remain a question mark.