NEW DELHI: The template has been set. The character has been written. Now it is a question of head coach Gautam Gambhir‘s consistent approach. If that happens, the legacies of Indian cricket will be written and rewritten.
Sunday’s T20 game in Gwalior was another mini-step towards establishing the Gambhir era. Picking youngsters, bringing them in at the right moment, packing the team with all-rounders, and going hard in the T20 format are all traits of Gambhir’s mindset.You just need to cast your mind back to his Kolkata Knight Riders days as captain and later as mentor or with LSG as their mentor and you will understand.
KKR won IPL titles in 2012 and 2014. Those teams were full of all-rounders and multi-utility cricketers. Andre Russell, Shakib Al Hassan, Yusuf Pathan, and Lakshmi Ratan Shukla were all part of KKR. Around them, other players like Rajat Bhatia, Piyush Chawla, and Vinay Kumar could add value in more than one department.
Cut to the current T20 setup – Hardik Pandya, Washington Sundar, Axar Patel, currently-injured Shivam Dube, and new-kid-on-the-block Nitish Reddy all tick the box. Others who add value are Rinku Singh and Riyan Prag. The brand of cricket is fearless, something that three times IPL-winning captain and coach Gambhir has always professed.
Another aspect that Gambhir swears by is the role of bowlers. “Batters setup games, bowlers win you titles,” he would say and ardently maintain. He’d always advocate for playing Test matches with 5 bowlers. Even in white ball format he will make sure that there is a large and rich pool of bowlers.
Getting Mayank Yadav, Varun Chakravarthy, Harshit Rana and Yash Dayal in the squad is part of that initiative. While the Gwalior T20I provided a small sample the real deal was on show during the recently concluded Test series against Bangladesh.
Leading 1-0 in the Test series, India could have easily played for a dull draw in the rain-affected Kanpur Test. But we saw a new India come out all guns blazing on Day 4, shattering records and reputations.
At the very bottom of this approach was Gambhir – an aggressive, in-your-face brand of cricket. He has always maintained that for winning in sport you should be prepared to lose, a mindset India happily embraced in Kanpur. The team could have easily been bundled out for a low score while trying to make a match of it but they were willing to risk it.
It seemed that Kanpur was witnessing T20 carnage in whites. The fastest 50, fastest 100, 200 and then 250 in Test cricket kept coming. But the real story lies beyond numbers and records.
Bouncy, red-soil pitch in Chennai
India opted to play on a bouncy, red-soil pitch in the first Test match in Chennai. They wanted to beat Bangladesh and test their own batters keeping the Australia tour in mind. They could have easily opted for under-prepared, rank turners as has been the case in the past while playing at home. Rohit and Co. need to be credited for that because from the England Test series at home earlier this year, the side has adapted to sporting tracks.
There is nothing more important than winning for Gambhir. Even when he was Delhi captain more than a decade back, the left-hander opted to play on the spicier surface of Roshanara Club instead of placid tracks at the then Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium. He could have beefed up his numbers by playing at Kotla but he took the tougher route to help the team pocket crucial home points.
Virat Kohli pushed to No. 5
The ‘team first’ approach was again on show in another move. Virat Kohli, the most celebrated batter of the team, was asked to bat at number 5 instead of his usual number 4 in Test matches. Rishabh Pant was sent ahead of him to press on the accelerator.
Anyone who has followed Indian cricket closely will tell you that it is hard to get a celebrated batter to change his batting slot. Credit to Kohli as well that he happily moved down the order for a bigger cause. It is indeed a very relaxed and happy dressing room.
This is not the first time that Gambhir has ignored the stature of a player and based his selection calls on the team’s benefit. In 2012 before the IPL final against Chennai Super Kings, he dropped one of the top KKR batters Brendon McCullum. The move was forced due to injury to regular pacer Balaji and Gambhir had to play Brett Lee instead. He recently revealed in an interview that he apologised to McCullum in front of the whole KKR team for that call but he doesn’t regret it as it was for the team’s cause. That final was won by KKR.
There is just one cult in that dressing room…
Gambhir has always preached and practised that Indian cricket should stop hero-worshipping. From his playing days to his time as a commentator he has been extremely vocal about this facet. One of his first speeches delivered during the KKR training camp earlier this year had this message too.
“So people who played with me will know one thing about me, that everyone in this group will be treated equally. There’s no senior or junior. There is no domestic or international,” he said at Eden Gardens before IPL 2024 started. KKR went on to win the title this year with Gambhir as its mentor. He is following that in the Indian team too. There seems to be no preferential treatment to seniors as everyone plays for the team’s cause.
Gambhir is here to win, to recreate legacies, to play the team sport the way it is meant to be played. All he needs is consistency, courage and of course support of his players to walk this path.