The Manchester crowd showed no mercy to India captain Shubman Gill on Wednesday as he walked out to bat on the first afternoon of the fourth Test. The loud boos were a direct response to Gill’s fiery outburst in the pre-match press conference, which followed his verbal clash with Zak Crawley during the third Test at Lord’s.
India made a steady start at Old Trafford after being put in to bat, with the openers putting up a 94-run stand. But England hit back hard in the second session of Day 1, dismissing both openers — KL Rahul edged Chris Woakes to Crawley at slip, and Liam Dawson ended Jaiswal’s stay.
As Gill emerged from the dressing room, jeers rang around the ground. The crowd, still stirred by his bold comments on England players, gave him a hostile welcome. But the India skipper responded in style — with a pair of crisp, well-timed shots to get off the mark, momentarily silencing the crowd.
It also showed how much Gill has grown in handling on-field mind games — something that had rattled him earlier in the series. He was famously thrown off by Harry Brook’s banter in Birmingham, which cost him a shot at a historic triple century, and later by Ben Duckett at Lord’s, who confronted him a day after the Crawley spat.
However, Gill’s stay was short-lived. Ben Stokes struck the perfect blow — a delivery that angled in and thudded into Gill’s pad after he chose to leave it. The India No. 3 reviewed it, only to see the ball smashing into the top of the off stump. Stokes followed it up with an animated, in-your-face celebration — a fiery response that capped England’s revenge.
