'We are playing to win': When Gill and Gambhir took a bold stand in the face of ICC penalty and pushed for victory

The ‘Gill-Gambhir Era’ of Indian cricket was off to a start that was much better than expected with a relatively inexperienced team led by Shubman Gill holding Ben Stokes’ Englishmen to a 2-2 draw in a five-match series for the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy this summer.

The high-voltage series, which some consider to be the most thrilling since the 2005 Ashes, has had its fair share of memorable moments – from the hosts’ dominant chase at Headingley and Joe Root moving to No 2 in the leading run-scorers’ list to Gill breaking numerous batting records and Mohammed Siraj's tirelessly sending down over a thousand deliveries without losing steam.

There is another moment from the series that might have escaped the attention of experts and other followers of the game, but serves to showcase the Indian team’s steely resolve in England that helped them force a draw in Manchester and collect a narrow victory at The Oval – both from a hopeless position.

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When Gill and Gambhir took a bold stand for victory

Going back to the series finale at The Oval, the match was on a knife edge when bad light and rain forced the umpires to signal stumps earlier than expected. England, appeared set for a 3-1 series victory at 301/3 in their chase of a challenging 374-run target, suddenly found themselves on the back foot after getting reduced to 339/6 at the end of the day's play.

Collecting the last four wickets, however, wasn’t the only thing that was bothering the Indian team on the final day. Match referee Jeff Crowe, after all, had warned Gill and Gambhir that they stood to lose ICC World Test Championship points for slow over rate unless they did something to fix the issue on the final day.

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One solution was to deploy spin-bowling all-rounders Ravindra Jadeja or Washington Sundar from one end and have a pacer from the other in order to improve the over rate. Such a scenario, however, came with a risk – of allowing England’s overnight batters in-form wicketkeeper-batter Jamie Smith and bowling all-rounder Jamie Overton to settle at the centre and knock the remaining runs off without much fuss.

According to Dainik Jagran, Gambhir wasn’t having any of it and called for pace from both ends in order to maintain the stranglehold on the two batters, who had looked uncomfortable before stumps on the previous day.

“I don’t care about the over rate. If we lose four points, so be it. We are playing to win,” Gambhir was quoted by the newspaper as saying during the meeting with Gill and batting coach Sitanshu Kotak.

The move worked in the Indian team’s favour in the end as senior pacer Mohammed Siraj dismissed Smith and Overton in successive overs while Prasidh Krishna castled Josh Tongue. Siraj would then seal a memorable triumph for the Indian team by castling Gus Atkinson when the hosts were one hit away from leveling the scores.