With four wins and seven losses in IPL 2024, the Gujarat Titans captain Shubman Gill is having a tough introduction to captaincy.
Having not led a franchise before in his relatively young IPL career, the pressure of captaincy has adversely impacted his batting too.
Gill was the winner of the Orange Cap in the previous edition of the Indian Premier League with 890 runs but accumulation of runs in the ongoing IPL edition has proved difficult for Gill.
It can be argued that Gill enjoyed a dream season last year and matching the same tally of runs was always going to be an arduous task but Gill has fallen way short and is not even remotely close to the mountain that he scaled in IPL 2023.
While it's uncertain whether Gill will be able to take Titans into the playoffs this season, his teammate David Miller has come out in his support and mentioned that the youngster is "adjusting really well to the captaincy".
"Shubman is an exceptional player, as we all know. He is still young and has a lot to learn. But I feel he is adjusting really well to the captaincy," said Miller in his post-match press meet after Gujarat's four-wicket loss to Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on Saturday (May 4).
"But I feel it's a tough one too because the margins are so small."
Opening up on the loss to RCB, Miller said that Titans' bowlers "missed their length" whereas the hosts were spot on with their length.
"Their (RCB bowlers) lengths were a lot better than ours. But we just missed our length, and in the first two, two and a half, three overs where they were already on like 50-60 runs.
"It just looked like they (GT bowlers) were a little bit too far full. I think we were a little bit behind the 8-ball in the power play with our batting and bowling," he mentioned.
Reflecting on the season, Miller felt that Titans couldn't win the "crucial moments" this season - something they had won in the previous season.
"There are certain games that we potentially should have won, that we did lose and were pretty close.
If we had won those two games, things would have been very different.
"We won crucial moments (last year) and this year we just haven't been able to win those crucial moments, hence losing the close games," he added.
