India, Jan. 26 -- An international season that began with great promise went steadily pear-shaped for Shubman Gill, his travails outside the sub-continent mercilessly exposed in the Test series in Australia. Gill redeemed himself after a first-innings duck against Bangladesh in Chennai with an unbeaten 119 in the second dig in September, but in the subsequent six Tests, he had only one further innings of 40 or more. In Australia, his sequence of scores was 31 and 28 (pink-ball Test, Adelaide), 1 (Brisbane) and 20 and 13 (Sydney).

Gill was one of several specialist Test batters who featured in the penultimate round of league matches in the Ranji Trophy, but the only one to produce an innings of substance, a flowing second-innings 102 for ...