OK Google, teach me how to bat: Shubman Gill gives batting tips with Sundar Pichai

Shubman Gill gave Google CEO Sundar Pichai a batting masterclass at Google’s Gurugram office, explaining how to play the short ball using wrists and hips instead of arm extension.

Shubman Gill and Sundar Pichai at the Google office in Gurgaon. (Image: Instagram’/Shubman Gill, PTI)

In a rare overlap between the tech and cricketing worlds, India’s Test and ODI captain Shubman Gill shared the stage with Google CEO Sundar Pichai at the tech giant’s Gurugram office for a Google India event on Saturday, February 21, where the prolific batter gave an impromptu masterclass on one of cricket’s more nuanced skills: playing the short ball.

Gill was seen addressing a question on the topic, with Pichai even having a go with the bat himself, making for an unlikely but entertaining exchange between two giants of their respective fields. The setting was a fitting one, given Google’s growing presence in India and cricket’s status as the country’s most beloved sport.

The India captain began by explaining the fundamentals of playing a conventional pull shot, stressing that arm extension is at the heart of it. “When you’re playing a pull shot, your arms need to be extended. That’s how you meet the ball and stay in full control,” Gill said. It sounds simple enough, but as he went on to explain, the margin for error is razor-thin when a batter is rushed for time.

“But when you’re late, you don’t have that much time. You realise you can’t extend your arms, so you use your wrists and your hip to generate the power instead,” he explained. It is a skill that most batters are forced into under pressure, but Gill revealed that for him, it was something he actively embraced and developed over time.

“It is not something you practise very often, because you don’t want to be practising getting caught late,” he acknowledged. “But I was also the kind of player who liked to play late. I liked the ball coming in close to me. Instead of using my arms, I’d use my wrists and my hips. That’s how I got the ball away faster,” he added.

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/sports/cricket/story/shubman-gill-shares-batting-tips-google-sundar-pichai-video-vira-2872171-2026-02-21