Guwahati: Accountability starts and stops with the captain or the coach in competitive cricket and so Gautam Gambhir was asked if he would step down in light of India’s second series sweep defeat to South Africa after New Zealand last year. To that, Gambhir said it’s up to the BCCI to decide.
“I said it in my first press conference when I took over as the head coach. Indian cricket is important, I’m not important.”
What he said next though gave an expected twist to the narrative.
“And yes, people can keep forgetting about it. I’m the same guy who got results in England as well, with a young team. And I’m sure you guys will forget very soon, because a lot of people keep talking about New Zealand. And I’m the same guy under who India won the Champions Trophy and the Asia Cup as well. Yes, this is a team which has less experience. And I’ve said it before as well, that they need to keep learning and they’re putting everything possible to turn the tide.”
While there is no denying that the transition of the Test team has been quite rough, with R Ashwin, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma retiring, India have always found ways to counter it with more dignified cricket in the past. 2013 never felt this tectonic even though Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar had retired in the space of a year. A home series was lost to England in 2012 but at least India didn’t have a problem scoring. This transition however, is taking a serious toll on India’s home record. Gambhir has a simple solution to that—improve and prioritise red-ball cricket.
“Start prioritising Test cricket, if we are really, really serious about Test cricket,” he said. “That is going to happen overall where everyone needs to be the stakeholder. So if we really care about Test cricket, if we want Test cricket to flourish in India, I think we’ve got to have a collective effort to make that happen. Because just blaming the players or just blaming the support staff or just blaming certain individuals will not help.
“And as I just said, we can’t put things under the carpet. Come the white-ball formats, if you get runs in white-ball formats, suddenly you forget about what you have done in red-ball cricket. That should never happen.
“You don’t need the most skillful and the most flamboyant players to succeed in Test cricket. You need the toughest characters with limited skills who will go on to succeed in Test cricket irrespective of how the conditions (are) and what the situation is.”
At 95/1 in the first innings, India had an opportunity to respond to South Africa with a big score. But India lost a cluster of wickets, and South Africa never slipped from there.
“From 95 for 1 to 120 for 7 is not acceptable,” said Gambhir. “And we keep talking about spin, but then one seamer got four wickets in that spell. And we’ve had these collapses in the past as well. Someone needs to put their hand up and say that I’m going to stop this collapse.”
Rishabh Pant, standing in for the injured Shubman Gill, could have made a difference. But he mistimed his slog. Gambhir didn’t take names but took a veiled dig at him nonetheless.
“If someone gets a 40 ball 50 or 80 ball 100, the reality is that we still need to keep getting better in red ball cricket. Because if we are really serious about being the top Test team in the world, I think we cannot put things under the carpet. Because the reality is we still need to improve a lot in red ball cricket.
“Whether it’s mentally, whether it’s technically, whether it’s absorbing pressure, whether it’s sacrificing, whether it’s putting the team ahead of your individual self. And most importantly, not playing for the gallery.
“It comes from care. How much you care about the dressing room and the team. Because accountability and the game situation can never be taught. You can talk about skills, you can work on skills, you can keep talking about the mental aspect of the game, but ultimately when you go in, if you keep putting the team ahead of your own self, not thinking, ‘this is how I play, and this is how I will get the results, I don’t have plan B,’ so sometimes you will get these kind of collapses as well.”
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