Sydney: Gautam Gambhir’s confrontational style may have raised the hackles in the Indian dressing room but the under-fire head coach has made it clear he has no intention of toning down his approach in an era of transition for the team. Reports have emerged of Gambhir having some strong words with the team following the shock collapse at the MCG, and on Thursday he was asked to explain the situation.
Gambhir repeatedly harped on the word “honesty” while vehemently insisting he had “everything in control”.
“Those are just reports. They’re not the truth. There were some honest words. We had just one conversation, on how to win the next Test. Honesty is extremely important if you want to go on and achieve great things,” he said.
“It’s not like the debate between a player and a coach should be known to everybody. It should just be between them. You just see the results. Conversations between individuals in the dressing room, they should just stay there.”
Gambhir harped on ‘honesty’ again when asked about his thoughts on moving on from a bunch of underperforming seniors.
“I think Indian cricket will always be in safe hands till the time you’ve got honest people sitting in that room. Honesty is the most important thing for any transition,” he said.
“It’s not (just) about phasing out senior players or getting the youngsters in. Ultimately, the only thing keeping you in the dressing room is performance. And it starts from all of us. Not only from the players, but the coaches as well. “The kind of talent that is there, we’ll always be in safe hands,” he continued.
“There’ll be times when we might not get the results. There’ll be times when we have to be patient. Rather than only criticizing the younger players, we’ve got to give them time as well.” Some players like Rishabh Pant have got out playing injudicious strokes against the run of play in an attempt to showcase their natural game, and without taking names, Gambhir said, “I don’t want to talk about individuals. Everyone knows who they are. It’s the team first ideology that matters. You’ve got to play what the team needs you to do. People can play their natural game, but still, in a team sport, if you’ve got to play in a certain way, you’ve got to do it.”
There have been murmurs in certain quarters that Gambhir — who has successfully mentored IPL teams like KKR and LSG — has a highhanded management approach that suits franchise cricket more than it does an international team.
Now, he is under pressure to explain the team’s poor recent streak in Tests.
“That’s why it’s called Test cricket. You’ve got to play the moments. You’ve got to try and break it down to the smallest of things as well, to every session, every hour, probably every over,” he said.
“In places like Australia, every hour matters. That’s the beauty of Test cricket because it’s the only format where conditions keep changing. You’ve got to keep fighting. That is one area where we’ve lacked in this series.”
Time will tell if he can bring the best out of players at this level. Gambhir knows a turnaround has to be engineered at any cost. Given the results over the past few months, he’s got off to a rocky start.
