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All of a sudden, this country has woken up to the fact that Gautam Gambhir isn’t the right choice to continue as head coach of the Indian cricket team. Through his political secretary, he leaks cricket stories, challenges the star quotient in the team, and breaks the confidence of captain Rohit Sharma and is the ‘main force’ behind all the rifts in the dressing room. All of a sudden, people speak of his chances of continuing as the head coach if the Indian team loses the Champions Trophy and England series back-to-back. However, thank God the IPL is a breather for Gambhir, who enjoys unconditional support from BCCI bigwigs as of now.
Otherwise, life is tough for Gambhir, who wasn’t even a top choice of BCCI at the time of his appointment. Still, he got the job because of his alignment with the BCCI bosses. There was VVS Laxman too. But who would care for a Laxman in T20? It would have been laughable to appoint a Test specialist as T20 coach. The choice had to be Gambhir, who single-handedly branded himself to be the ‘main force’ behind Kolkata Knight Riders’ 2024 IPL win. Therefore, right after India won the T20 World Cup, Gambhir’s appointment as the head coach a few weeks later was like a walk in the park.
Since then, Gambhir has only won two series – the T20 series against Sri Lanka by a stroke of luck, and an insignificant Test series against Bangladesh. Otherwise, there is a lot for him to do as head coach. The pressure to perform is so intense that even the ‘nation wants to know’ news channel has reached Gambhir’s threshold to ascertain all those spat stories with Rohit. There is no inertia of rest. There has to be a fall guy for the loss in Australia. Either Gambhir or Rohit or perhaps both will have to own up for all the mess that happened Down Under.
So far, no casualty. Only thing that has come out, that too not officially, is that Rohit’s last swansong would be the Champions Trophy. Otherwise, it’s Gambhir all the way. It doesn’t matter if some of the Indian cricketers have started to take him as a big joke. In reply, Gambhir too doesn’t hold some of the players in high esteem because they are playing on reputation rather than on form.
Gambhir, meanwhile, is hounded by a cub reporter with a threat to jump into his private property to enlighten us with his side of the story.
The story is very simple as Rohit prepares for the last leg of his journey and possibly announces his retirement from international cricket right after the Champions Trophy or after IPL and Gambhir will fortunately get another opportunity in England to prove his worth as the head coach. Although, one thing is common between these two so-called great friends – they both ran away from playing international games during their time. By Rohit’s own admission, he opted out of the Sydney Test on his own while Gambhir did something similar when he was accused of faking a head-injury during the 2011 series against England. Both had a similar script of not being able to score runs for their team.
However, if the same Indian team wins the Champions Trophy – then it is ‘7 Khoon Maaf’. If India fails, the ball is in Gambhi’s court again. So, what if there is no one except Jasprit Bumrah to lead India in all formats? So, what if Gambhir isn’t completely convinced about Bumrah becoming a full-fledged captain because of the workload management issue? Is it because Gambhir would like a lesser mortal as captain so that he can call the shots from the dressing room? How about a young blood getting groomed under Bumrah? Gambhir has to agree. He isn’t the selector. At least, Bumrah deserves this. That is because Rohit has been showing the carrot of captaincy to Bumrah since the Covid-19 days. Now that the fast bowler is the best in the business and deserves to be the captain, Rohit won’t mind. Not even Gambhir, right?
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