On the Grade Cricketer podcast, Shubman Gill gave a peek into the intensity of the battle during the Australian tour, revealing the banter between him and Pat Cummins.

Gill had an outstanding Test series in Australia, fronting up to a strong Australian attack. Making his Test debut on the tour, Gill hit two half-centuries and averaged over 50 with the bat in the series.

On the podcast, Gill detailed how his senior opening partners on tour, Mayank Agarwal and Rohit Sharma, allowed him to not take strike the first ball to ease him in.

“I remember in my debut innings that Mayank was kind enough to say ‘Okay, I know you are under pressure so I will take the strike’ and he took the strike in both innings,” Gill said on the podcast. “And then in the next match, I was supposed to take the strike but Mayank didn’t play, Rohit bhai played.”

Gill recalled how he asked Rohit if he could take strike at the very last moment, while Mitchell Starc was marking his run up, in the Gabba Test. “I remember we were almost in the middle, we were up at the crease, tapping our bats and I asked Rohit ‘Can you please take the strike?’. Because Mitch [Starc] was going on his run-up and I was trying to search the non-striker’s end.”

However, his most interesting battle during the Border Gavaskar Trophy came with Kolkata Knight Riders’ teammate Pat Cummins.

Going back to the first over he faced from Cummins in the series, Gill recalled how he could barely get bat to the ball.

“Honestly, the first over I faced from Pat Cummins, I don’t think I touched one ball,” Gill says. “When I was going in to bat, one of the bowlers from our team told me that the wicket is slow and it’s coming off [the pitch] a bit spongy. And the first or second ball as I leave, I hear the noise from Tim Paine’s gloves going “dhaakkk” and I am like ‘What? Someone said the wicket was slow’. It was flying off the wicket. That first over, I don’t think I touched anything. In the second I got bat to ball, and I felt I could go on from there.”

The banter levels were also up, and it went back and forth right from the time the 2020 edition of the IPL was played.

“So, I and Patty were there in KKR. We were teammates there and had a pretty good bond. When we were there, I remember he gave an interview to the KKR management saying that ‘we’ll have the chin music going on’ or something like that,” Gill told.

“And then when I was batting, he was continuously trying to bounce me and I was leaving them. After the match, there was a press conference and I said ‘if they have their chin music, we know the moves to dance to that’. So, the banter was going on and he would go ‘where are your dance moves now?'”

There is no love lost between the two, however, with recently Cummins sharing how he and Gill exchanged their Test jerseys during the IPL season.

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