Shubman Gill lit up the Headingley Cricket Ground with an unbeaten 127 on the opening day of the first Test match between India and England.The Indian captain reached his century in the final session of the day, marking a memorable start to his captaincy tenure.With the ton, Gill joined an elite group of Indians — Vijay Hazare, Sunil Gavaskar, Dilip Vengsarkar, and Virat Kohli — who scored centuries in their first Test as captain.Remarkably, he had damaged one of his favourite bats during India’s intra-squad match at Beckenham, Kent. India’s new Test captain had texted Cricfix_batservices, a company that repairs broken and damaged bats in Kent.In a video posted by the company on Instagram, they explained how Shubman’s bat got damaged and what they did to fix it.“So this bat actually belongs to an Indian Test match player,” the shop’s owner can be heard saying in the video.“That’s right, today we’re repairing a bat from India captain Shubman Gill. We received a text saying that Shubman had damaged the toe of one of his bats during a training session, and he needed us to come and pick it up and sort it out ahead of the Test match.“As you can see, it looks like he had to dig out a nasty yorker during training, and it left this nasty indentation and a couple of splits that we needed to fix. We made sure to glue up all the cracks and then apply a small wedge into the toe, which pushed up the damaged area and made the toe nice and flat again.“Then we lightly sanded the bat, as it’s one of Shubman’s favourites and he didn’t want to affect the ping in any way.“Coming to the end of the repair, we gave the bat a buff and polish to make it look nice and shiny. Shubman also asked us to apply some thread binding to the toe to keep the weak area tight, and he opted for a fabric facing, so we applied that as well.“Here’s the finished bat, looking brand new once again — toe repair all sorted. It was really cool to see him using it again in training the next day. I’m wishing him all the best for the series ahead.”One of the fans even commented, “Looks like it’s working out for him! 127*.” To which the owner replied, “Not sure whether to be happy or not 😄.”India will resume Day 2 at 359 for 3. Vice-captain Rishabh Pant was batting on 65, giving Gill company when stumps were called.
