India captain Shubman Gill may be carrying an underlying injury, according to his Gujarat Titans teammate Jos Buttler, who plays under his captaincy at the franchise and said he was surprised to watch Gill cramp while batting in England, a country far cooler than the conditions he regularly plays in without the same problem.
Buttler made the remarks on the For The Love of Cricket podcast, which he co-hosts with former England fast bowler Stuart Broad. The episode aired on July 21, a day after India completed a ODI series loss.
Broad raised the question after observing that Gill lost his rhythm in both Birmingham and at Lord’s once he passed a similar score in each innings. Buttler said he had checked with Shreyas Iyer on the field during one of the matches to find out what was actually happening.
“He’s only got 70 or 80, and he’s in England. It’s not the 40 degrees of heat of Ahmedabad that he’s used to batting in. But no, I don’t know actually really what was going on there.”
Jos Buttler, For The Love of Cricket podcast, July 21, 2026
Buttler then went a step further.
“Maybe he’s got an underlying injury or something. I don’t know, but you’re right. It maybe did slow him down a bit and got him out at a crucial time at Lord’s.”
Jos Buttler, For The Love of Cricket podcast, July 21, 2026
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Stuart broad :- Your skipper of GT Shubman Gill, every time he gets a 70s, he is cramming up in Birmingham and Lords, he lost his rhythm in both innings, what can he do about that?
Jos Buttler :- I don’t know…he got only 70 & 80 but He’s in England & it is not the 40*C of… pic.twitter.com/SmG9TVJM7u
— Indian Cricket 🏏 (@navshar54008403) July 21, 2026
The clips were shared from Stuart Broad and Jos Buttler’s For The Love of Cricket podcast channel. No official statement from Gill or the BCCI has been made in response at time of publication.
What makes Buttler’s observation different from standard pundit comment is his position. Buttler plays under Gill’s captaincy at Gujarat Titans, travels alongside him through the IPL season, and has direct knowledge of the player’s physical condition across months of shared cricket. Broad directed the question to Buttler specifically as Gill’s GT teammate, not as an outside observer. When someone with that kind of proximity says there may be something deeper going on, it is worth taking seriously.
The specific concern Broad raised is confirmed by the match record. Gill retired hurt on 80 off 75 balls at Edgbaston in the first ODI on July 14, with the right hamstring the issue. Medical scans found no structural damage. At Lord’s on July 20, cramping returned while Gill was on 77. He continued, but ESPNcricinfo’s live coverage noted he had been visibly uncomfortable for several overs before losing the control that had looked likely to take India past England’s total. India lost by 27 runs.
A Pattern That Goes Back Further Than England
The episodes in Birmingham and at Lord’s came on top of a fitness history that had already been raising questions through 2025 and into this season. Against Afghanistan in Lucknow in June 2026, Gill experienced severe body cramps and batted wearing an ice collar. In April 2026, he missed Gujarat Titans IPL matches with recurring neck spasms and did not take the field in a second innings despite scoring 84 in the first. In November 2025, acute neck spasms forced him off just three deliveries into a Test innings against South Africa at Eden Gardens. He left the ground stretchered and wearing a neck brace.
The clearest explanation for what has been driving these episodes came from Gill himself, three years ago. When he retired hurt during the 2023 World Cup semi-final against New Zealand, he confirmed at the press conference that the cause was the dengue fever he had battled just before the tournament. He told broadcasters he was four kilos below his normal muscle mass and explained that the illness had shifted his cramp threshold, meaning problems that used to arrive much later in a long innings were now coming far sooner.
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Buttler’s surprise is understandable, but his Ahmedabad point is identifying the wrong cause. The heat is not what keeps the cramping manageable when Gill bats in India. It is the early warning signal. In 40-degree conditions, heavy sweating keeps the player and the support staff consciously on top of hydration and electrolytes from the opening overs. England’s cooler climate suppresses that signal entirely. The muscles are still working at high intensity, still depleting electrolytes at pace, but without the obvious cue to act on. The problem arrives without notice.
The moment it becomes critical is not accidental either. In a long ODI innings, the transition from building carefully to pushing the scoring rate comes after 30-plus overs on the feet, hard running between wickets, and sharp changes of direction. That shift in intensity is when reduced muscle reserve expresses itself most acutely. Gill himself told us in 2023 that dengue moved his threshold earlier. The score range Broad identified is exactly where that earlier threshold sits.
There is also what the body carries into each match before a delivery is even faced. The current international schedule leaves almost no genuine recovery window between assignments. Back-to-back tours, long-haul travel, matches arriving before muscles have had time to rebuild properly. This is a large part of why injury numbers across international cricket have climbed sharply in recent years. For Gill, the impact is more acute because his baseline was already compromised. His back has been a recurring concern since late 2025, and when the back is under sustained load the lower body compensates. The hamstrings and calves take on extra work to protect it, and those are exactly the muscles that gave way in England.
What Gill is experiencing is not one problem. It is the dengue legacy, the packed schedule, the back concern, and England’s suppressed hydration cues all converging at the same moment in a long knock. When he cramps out while in full control of a chase, India lose their best bat at exactly the point the innings needs him most. That is what happened in both matches India lost in this series, and it is what needs to be addressed before the 2027 World Cup arrives.
After the Lord’s defeat, Gill raised the squad’s fitness levels publicly. He said that at least five players from India’s original squad did not take the field in the decider, and that if a player is missing after every match, “somewhere we are missing a trick.” He warned that India cannot afford this pattern with the World Cup requiring eleven matches in a row. His own episodes during that same series went unaddressed in his public comments.
The BCCI and Gill have not publicly responded to what Broad and Buttler said on the podcast.
Sources:
- Stuart Broad and Jos Buttler, For The Love of Cricket podcast, July 21, 2026
- Gill hospitalised, South Africa Test, November 2025 Gulf News
- Gill on dengue and muscle mass, ICC World Cup 2023 The Quint
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