Where will Gautam Gambhir take India next?

3 minute read

A 3-1 defeat in Australia is no catastrophe really, but that isn’t to say India didn’t experience catastrophic moments. In fact looking back, it could have been a real horror show if it weren’t for Jasprit Bumrah. At times like this, we tend to wonder how the captain will respond – except in this case the captain became a living, breathing catastrophic moment and dropped himself. All eyes on the coach instead then…

Viewed from the outside, Gautam Gambhir seemed a funny appointment as India coach when Rahul Dravid stood down in July. The team’s moved towards smooth, professional, high performance in recent years and Gambhir, to us, feels like a throwback to a more petulant and insecure era.

That’s possibly unfair. We can’t point to too many incriminating moments in support of that view. Sure, he elbowed the odd opposition player on the field of play and got into his fair share of spats, but his infamous 2012 comment about wanting rank turners at home comes across as far less small-minded now than it did when he said it.

At the same time, his team has been pretty tetchy. That happens when you’re losing, but Virat Kohli’s shoulder charge (and faux outraged stare) was embarrassing – as was his weaving sprint so that he could celebrate near the same batter when Usman Khawaja was dismissed in the final Test. (In his defence, Konstas does seem to be quite annoying. Pat Cummins was being disingenuous when he said, “You’re allowed to walk around with your shoulders puffed back and play a few cricket shots,” because it hasn’t just been that. Striding towards a bowler who’s frustrated at being stopped halfway through his run-up by the other batter’s gamesmanship so that you can mouth off at him really isn’t a necessary course of action.)

Gambhir’s defensive position afterwards that, “you can’t be that soft,” encourages the notion that he probably doesn’t do much to discourage this kind of thing. Maybe he thinks it sharpens India’s competitive edge, but it just seems like a waste of energy to us.

More concerning – but possibly fictional – is the claim from a ‘source’ that he went all ‘my way or the high way’ after India were bowled out for 155 in Melbourne.

It was just one of a great many sub-200 scores India registered this series, but Gambhir is supposed to have said he’d had enough of batters playing their natural games and that from now on he’d “decide” how they played. Maybe something was lost in translation or gained in anonymous sourcing, but these sorts of mad, control freak proclamations don’t speak of a man blessed with too much of a clue.

At some point the coach will have to venture some sort of opinion on Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli as well, having been diplomatically vague in press conferences thus far. India’s captain’s effectively a non-bowling nightwatcher these days, while Kohli’s appetite for waving slightly fatiguely (as Simon Hughes once memorably described it) is such that he was caught by the wicketkeeper or a slip fielder every time he was dismissed this series. You don’t even need to watch his dismissals any more. They’re indistinguishable from each other.

With R Ashwin already having shipped out, the Test team’s in need of a few repairs. India’s next series is in England in June.