This correspondent met Gautam Gambhir many moons ago, when he was an active international player. He was dropped from the Indian squad and downgraded to Grade B on the BCCI’s officially contracted players list.
Gambhir put everything into perspective. He explained that his demotion was not the end of the world and that he remained in the BCCI’s plans. That was Gambhir, constantly seeking for the good.
In a star-studded Indian dressing room, he was an ordinary man. In personality-obsessed Indian cricket, he was someone who considered the group. Leaving aside the demigod status of some players, cricket is a commoner’s game. MS Dhoni, for example, required Joginder Sharma to bowl a superb final over against Pakistan to win his first world title. Virat Kohli would not have hit 80 international hundreds if it were not for the non-strikers.
Cricket is a team sport, not an individual game. Gambhir believes in that. As India’s new coach, he will apply that mentality in the locker room. He is taking over a very successful team, but with a shift on the horizon, his task will be to keep the entire process running smoothly.
Rahul Dravid took over Ravi Shastri’s successful team and elevated it to new heights. Over the last two and a half years, India has reached the World Test Championship final, finished second in the 50-over World Cup, and won the T20 World Cup. Historically, in Indian cricket, astonishing highs have been followed by incredible lows.
Rewind to 1971, when India won their first Test series against the West Indies and England. Three years later, in 1974, the ‘Summer of 42’ took place in Britain. The 1983 World Cup victory was followed by a crushing defeat at home by Clive Lloyd’s marauding Caribbean team. And Gambhir witnessed firsthand how Duncan Fletcher failed to handle the transition after succeeding Gary Kirsten.
Under Kirsten, India won the World Cup and climbed to the top of the world Test tree. Under Fletcher, they suffered back-to-back whitewashes in England and Australia, with some of the Tests finishing inside six sessions.
At the moment, the Indian team runs on auto-pilot. But a few retirements here, a couple of injuries there, and things can change quickly. The good thing is that the team will always have Gambhir’s winning mentality to fall back on.
“My learning has been simple; it is all about winning,” the new head coach stated during his first press conference. “I do not deviate from something. In our profession, there can only be one winner. We aim to play fairly. We try to play hard and come return to a winning and cheerful dressing room.
In modern-day sport, players hold the ultimate power. So it’s important to win over the dressing room. Dravid was loved and revered by the players, because besides coaching and mentoring them, he was also their friend. Gambhir knows he cannot be stubborn.
“It is important to give players freedom,” he said. “That’s what I believe in, and not have a relationship of a head coach and a player.”
Gambhir detested Indian cricket’s celebrity culture. As the mentor of the Kolkata Knight Riders, his first team meeting emphasized treating everyone equally. “There are no seniors or juniors in the team,” he informed his KKR teammates.
The Indian team is a different kettle of fish and Gambhir will have to manage differently. First day first show, and he hit the right note.
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