New Delhi, March 5:
Seven months ago, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) appointed former batsman Gautam Gambhir as the head coach of Team India. Gambhir came to this position after the successful tenure of Rahul Dravid. He had tough challenges ahead of him. Gambhir’s style was quite different from Dravid’s and discussions began to be held about whether his relations with senior players like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma would be better? Within a short time, Gambhir’s tenure started getting criticized and questions were raised on his style as well.
Gambhir took over as the head coach of the Indian team in July last year. Gambhir came to the post at a time when India won the T20 World Cup title during Dravid’s tenure. Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli had retired from T20 Internationals. The Indian team was going through a phase of change in this format. It was believed that Hardik Pandya would be given the command of the T20 team. But Suryakumar Yadav got the captaincy. It was a surprising decision, but Gambhir’s era had started in Team India and Gambhir probably played an important role in Suryakumar getting the captaincy.
After the disappointing performance in the ODI series against Sri Lanka, Gambhir started getting criticized on social media. He started being compared to Dravid’s tenure. However, this was his first tour as a coach, so the board also did not take these criticisms too seriously. After the Sri Lanka series, the Indian team got a break of about a month. Gambhir’s test was to begin after the rest. India had to play 10 Test matches between September and January and these were very important in terms of reaching the final of the World Test Championship (WTC) 2023-25 cycle. (Agencies)