ODI World Cup 2023: India batter Shubman Gill reveals REASON ...

India batter Shubman Gill attributed the cramps he suffered while batting against New Zealand in first semifinal of the ODI World Cup 2023 to dengue he suffered at the start of the campaign. Gill had missed India's first two games of the ongoing tournament because of dengue. 

"It started with cramps and then I pulled my hamstring a little bit," Gill said at the post-match press conference. "It was quite humid and just the after-effects of dengue."

"I have honestly not really adjusted anything in terms of my batting but because I have lost a bit of muscle mass, I think the reserve that I used to have before the dengue has decreased a little bit […] You do get cramps when you're playing in humid conditions, but for me [it] happens after a long period of time, not so soon," he further explained. "But because I think I've lost a bit of muscle mass; the reserve has gone down a bit."

Gill, who was batting at 79 off 65, had to be retired hurt in the 23rd over before coming back to bat in the final over post the fall of fourth wicket. The batter remained unbeaten on 80 off 66 and said he would have scored a 100 had he not been hit with the cramps.

"If I didn't get cramp, maybe I would have scored a hundred," Gill said. "But I think the total we were trying to reach, irrespective of whether I scored a hundred or not, we reached there. We had a hope of scoring around 400, we had expectations that by the 25th-30th over we should have scored these many runs, and we did that, so it didn't matter whether I made a century or not."

India, nonetheless, finished on 397/4 in 50 overs, thanks to Virat Kohli's record-breaking 50th ODI ton and Shreyas Iyer's second hundred on the trot. While defending, Mohammed Shami took 7/57 as India won the match by 70 runs to book a place in the final.