Veteran India batter Dinesh Karthik said how Team India’s top-order batter Shubman Gill has been under the scanner following a series of poor performances in Test cricket. However, Karthik said that the talented youngster was quite tentative in his approach while batting on Day 1 of the ongoing first Test against England in Hyderabad as well.

Suggesting that Gill may lose his place in the national team if he doesn’t step up, Karthik told Cricbuzz: “You can see pressure has gone to Shubman Gill. He knows if he fails a couple of times, his career, for the moment, could be on the line. So, you could see that reluctance.”

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However, Shubman Gill failed to leave a mark during India’s two-match Test series against South Africa last year. He scored just 74 runs across four innings. He got off to a good start in the first Test against England, remaining unbeaten on 14 off 43 deliveries as India finished 119/1 at the stumps as well. Dinesh Karthik also shared how Ben Stokes cannot succeed against Team India by using the same approach he did during the side’s Test series in Pakistan as well.

“After (Tom Hartley’s) three overs, I think 99 percent of the captains would have taken him off. I also think it is a huge learning curve for Ben Stokes as well. He is playing and captaining a little bit like how he captained (against) the Pakistan team. Two things are different than the Pakistan team: the calibre of batting and the kind of pitches that they played on. They played on flat pitches where they could score 500 at a quick pace and put Pakistan, who just played orthodox cricket and got that score in a much longer time. So, his way of setting fields was a lot more attacking, which is understandable because he had 500 runs on the board,” Dinesh Karthik concluded.