Shubman Gill Urges India to Improve Fitness Ahead of 2027 ODI World Cup

After India lost the last game of the three-match ODI series against England at Lord’s and conceded the series 1-2, Indian captain Shubman Gill has said that the team cannot afford to lose key players due to injuries every few matches if they want to be a strong contender at the 2027 ODI World Cup.

Gill said, “as a group, which includes both the players and the BCCI medical team, we need to pay attention to ‘improving fitness’ going forward.” In the last match played at Lord’s, India could not field their best playing XI since many of the players from the original 15-man squad were unavailable.

Among the few key players who missed the last game were Jasprit Bumrah, who was out due to an impact injury sustained during the second game at Cardiff, Washington Sundar and Harshit Rana too missed the game due to a hamstring injury. Nitish Kumar Reddy did not arrive in the UK after suffering quadriceps injury during the ODI series at home against Afghanistan in June.

Gill further quipped that the injuries forced the Indian think tank to change the team combination at the last minute before the game a few times. “If you look at the first squad we had announced for the England ODI series from that minimum five players did not play this match.”

If one of the players gets injured, you look at playing another combination and if two players are missing, you look at playing another combination. But if after every match some player is missing then somewhere we are missing a trick.

Speaking about the defeat at the Lord’s itself, which turned out to be a high-scoring game, Gill said that the Indian bowlers gave away too many loose deliveries within the first 10 overs and in the fag end of the English innings as well where the “momentum shifted” in favour of England.

Gill quoted, “our bowling is a little bit inexperienced. We were put under the pump in this match and we didn’t respond well. We didn’t start well in the powerplay. We gave away too many loose balls and then were always chasing the game trying to take wickets, create something which didn't happen for us. By then the game was already ahead of us. In the last three overs, we gave away 62 runs and that’s where the momentum completely shifted. We were sort of looking at a target of 340-350 at one point. They got close to 390 and chasing 390, no matter what surface you are batting it is never easy.”

According to Gil, the slowness in the pitch, which became more pronounced during the second half of India’s innings played a critical role in them failing to scale the massive target despite being ahead of England until the 45-over mark.

He concluded that India played a pretty decent series despite the loss. The one other key learning for him was that India were in the game for about 80% of the time but it was in the crunch moment, actual moments that dictate the game, where his team were missing the trick. India needed to get smarter in assessing the conditions.