Shubman Gill was back at nets at the Manuka Oval in Canberra on Friday showing no signs of discomfort following a thumb injury which ruled him out of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy opener in Perth.

His nets session brightens Gill’s chances of making the playing XI in the day-night Test in Adelaide from December 6. But the team managem­ent hasn’t yet confirmed if he will play the pink-ball warm-up game against Australian PM’s XI starting Saturday.

Rohit Sharma also batted alongside him in the nets. Gill took throwdowns from assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate and then moved to the practice nets to face Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep and Yash Dayal.

“Our physio will evaluate him and I will know his status after that,” assistant coach Abhishek Nayar said on Friday afternoon. “But from what I have seen, he is looking comfortable batting and he looks like he can bat. He is batting in the indoor nets and we will know if he can play the practice match or not.”

Gill too seemed happy with his progress. “I was just trying to get a feel to be honest, see how the injury is reacting, if any kind of soreness is there but it went much better than what I and Kamleshbhai (Kamlesh Jain, physio) expected. Very happy with that,” Gill said in a video posted by BCCI on X after the training session.

“Any ball when it hits the middle of the bat, the feeling that you get, that is the feeling I play for. When I got to know about my injury, first couple of days I was quite low and disappointed.

“Perth is the only venue we did not play last time around (2020-21). It is such an iconic venue. But the way we played at the end of it, I was very happy,” Gill said.

The forecast for the practice game isn’t encouraging. The Indians trained through a drizzle and it’s expected to rain during the next two days. They are getting ready with extended sessions in the indoor nets if conditions aren’t favourable.

“Whether it’s a pink ball or a red ball, the difference is really in the mind,” Nayar said. “Of course, there is a bit of difference — the colour is different, there is more lacquer — and we are lucky that we have got six-eight days to get ready.

“When we were in Perth, too, we were training with the pink ball. Rohit was training too. So we have started our preparations. We will continue to focus on our game.”

Rohit’s presence is already being felt in the ranks, as Nayar said, with “a lot of laughing and joking around”.

“So the morale and the environment is good. The morale is excellent anyway. Rohit wasn’t around initially, but he was very much with us (in spirit). So there wasn’t much of a difference.”