India started off the new era of Test cricket against England at Headingley in some serious fashion with a fantastic unbeaten 127 off 175 for the skipper, Shubman Gill, 101(159) for Yashasvi Jaiswal and an unbeaten 65(102) for Rishabh Pant on Day 1 of the series.
Coming into the series, there were a lot of uncertainties around captain Gill's batting in the overseas conditions, with an underwhelming record so far.
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However, the new Indian number 4 shut all the critics in some style with a ton where he always looked at the top while England bowlers tried everything in their hands.
That said, the newest member of the MRF family of greats had notably broken his bat with which he scored a ton ahead of the series. Check out how the events transpired as he went on to get a ton with the same bat.
READ MORE: Headingley weather forecast for IND vs ENG 1st Test
Was Gill's century-making bat broken vs England?
Ahead of the beginning of the series, when India trained for the first game in Leeds, the professional bat repairing services of (CricFix_BatServices/Instagram) were approached by the Indian team when the bottom of the bat that Gill used was indented.
See how they described the damage and consequent repair.
"So this bat actually belongs to an Indian Test match player. 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," said the shop owner in the viral Instagram reel.
"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," he described.
The bat repairers went on to explain what they did with the bat to make it as good as it was before the bottom of the bat was indented.
The thread binding and fabric facing that the repairers mention below were notably also seen on the 25-year-old's bat when he batted on Day 1 of the Test.
"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," they concluded.