Under Gautam’s guidance, India have recorded just three wins and seven losses in 11 matches so far
Gautam Gambhir. File pic
It will be safe to surmise that Gautam Gambhir’s apprenticeship as India’s head coach is behind him. The former opener succeeded Rahul Dravid last July, ahead of a white-ball tour of Sri Lanka, which with hindsight, was a portent of things to come. Gambhir’s record of seven losses in 11 matches as head coach is singularly unflattering.
After overseeing a 3-0 sweep in the T20 series under new skipper Suryakumar Yadav, Gambhir watched in consternation as the 50-over outfit came unstuck against spin while chasing in all three matches at the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo. After managing a tie in the first outing, India lost the remaining two, but a false sense of security was installed by a 2-0 rout of Bangladesh in the Test series, followed by a clean sweep of the three T20Is.
That’s as good as it got for Gambhir, save for a brief flourish in the desert sands of Dubai in February-March, when Rohit Sharma muscled India to their third Champions Trophy title. Either side of that commendable triumph, India have found the going tough in Test cricket.
Crushing defeats vs NZ
India’s woes began in Bengaluru when, despite losing the entire scheduled first day to rain and winning the toss on Day Two — in what effectively was a four-day Test — Rohit opted to bat. India were rolled over for 46, their lowest tally at home. The temptation to write off that defeat as a one-off was offset by crushing losses in the two subsequent Tests in Pune and Mumbai on square turners exploited by left-arm spinners Mitchell Santner and Ajaz Patel respectively.
Perth in November brought an unexpected windfall with a commanding victory in the first fixture, but since the beginning of December, Test cricket has been a difficult puzzle to crack. India have lost four of their last five Tests — the sole stalemate, in Brisbane, was thanks to the weather — to two teams under three different captains. Admittedly, Australia and England are the most difficult lands to visit for teams from the subcontinent, but the fear of the unknown is a thing of a past, considering how frequently India travel to those parts of the world these days.
Young batting core
Leeds last week was the first examination for India in the period of transition, in life after Rohit and Virat Kohli and R Ashwin. This has all the trappings of ‘Gambhir’s side’. Shubman Gill has been handpicked to shepherd the team’s fortunes over the next several years, with a young batting core that includes Rishabh Pant, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Sai Sudharsan and Nitish Reddy as his comrades in arms.
Gambhir’s record of three wins and seven losses in 11 matches as head coach is singularly unflattering. That he hasn’t come under greater scrutiny is either a growing sign of maturity of the average Indian fan or a certain indifference that stems from more pronounced investment of emotion in the outcome of white-ball internationals. Gambhir will get a long rope, especially now in the changed dynamic. But he must start to do justice to the ‘answerable only to the 140 crore Indians’ line he espouses. Swiftly.
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No. of games India have won in the last nine Tests
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