Head coach known for his match-saving efforts and combative batting will face yet another examination of a different kind as the visitors seek redemption following a shattering loss at home; they also need to create history in Australia if they are to make their third consecutive World Test Championship final
Gautam Gambhir found his calling as a plucky, uncompromising, combative Test opener who didn’t think twice about scrapping, often literally, with the big boys in the opposition. He might not have been the most gifted – a term generally reserved, for some reason, for batters easy on the eye – but he worked out a way to maximise his abilities, playing many a stirring knock with the team’s back to the wall.
His monumental 10-and-a-half-hour 137 in the second Test Napier in March 2009, after India were forced to follow on, enabled his team to preserve their 1-0 advantage and eventually secure victory by the same margin, marking their first series triumph in New Zealand for 33 years. Some 22 months later, despite being struck on his elbow early in the day by Morne Morkel, he batted on for four and a half hours to make 64 on the final day, securing a hard-fought draw on the back of which India left South Africa with honours even in a Test series for the first time.
But Gambhir wasn’t only about match-saving efforts. Or red-ball heroics. He was the team’s top scorer in the finals of both World Cup victories under Mahendra Singh Dhoni – in the inaugural T20 flagship event in Johannesburg against Pakistan in 2007 and at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium against Sri Lanka in 2011. He was versatile and adaptable, at home against spin as he was against pace, his big heart and the tendency to almost go looking for a fight valuable assets as he strove to make a point all over the world.
Gambhir wasn’t just a terrific batter, he is also a wonderful student of the game with the uncanny knack of getting the best out of his colleagues as a captain. He can be abrasive and rough around the edges, but he is also a staunch backer of men, a quality that was on full view when he steered Kolkata Knight Riders to IPL titles in 2012 and 2014.
A mentor
Post his playing days, Gambhir became a ‘mentor’ – a term that possesses multiple layers – with first Lucknow Super Giants and then, famously, at KKR this season, when he made his homecoming a triumphant one with Shreyas Iyer shepherding the team to a third title.
All of this catapulted him as Rahul Dravid’s successor when the man Gambhir idolised during his playing days stepped down as India’s head coach after steering the team to the promised land in the T20 World Cup in the Americas this June. Gambhir was an outlier until he wasn’t. For a long time, it was assumed in many quarters that once Dravid’s tenure ended, V.V.S. Laxman would assume the hot seat. After all, like Dravid, Laxman was the head honcho at the National Cricket Academy and his elevation to the head coach’s role was seen as a natural progression. But the Hyderabadi didn’t want the job for various reasons, which forced the Board of Control for Cricket in India to look elsewhere.
Gambhir became the obvious front-runner when he applied for the job. Unlike Dravid, and Laxman, who both travelled with the India-A and Under-19 teams — Laxman with the Indian team too when Dravid took a break or when two teams were playing in two different lands in different formats – as coach, Gambhir didn’t have coaching experience per se, ala Anil Kumble when he became the head coach in 2016 or Ravi Shastri when he returned to the management set-up in 2017 after having served as the director of the team for nearly two years between 2014 and 2016.
The lack of integrated coaching experience hadn’t prevented his predecessors from producing results, and Gambhir’s contemporariness – he played his last first-class match in December 2018 – was seen as an added, valuable asset. In a manner of speaking, Gambhir the batter had been the bridge between generations – the Tendulkar-Dravid-Laxman-Ganguly generation to the Pujara-Kohli-Rahane-Rohit era. It was therefore assumed that his familiarity with the current crop and the fact that he had shared dressing-rooms with them either in international, first-class or franchise cricket would work to everyone’s advantage.
Less than three and a half months since his first assignment, a white-ball tour of Sri Lanka in July-August, it will be fair to say that Gambhir is already feeling the heat. His maiden outing as head coach was a mixed bag; while India swept the Twenty20 Internationals 3-0 as Sri Lanka self destructed repeatedly to squander winning positions, the Indians surrendered the ODI series 0-2 with one match tied after failing to measure up to the Lankans’ assortment of spinners who made the most of supremely helpful conditions.
That should have been a proper wake-up call, considering that the top Indian Test batters – skipper Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli and Rishabh Pant – all were part of the ODI set-up. It should have been indication enough that turning tracks would bring even competent, not necessarily threatening, opposition spinners into the picture while neutralising India’s high-class pace attack spearheaded by the best all-format fast bowler in the world currently, Jasprit Bumrah. It was on the template of good cricket decks that India had crushed England 4-1 earlier in the year, with Bumrah, R. Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav all having big says. Even then, the warning signs were evident, with Shoaib Bashir, Tom Hartley and, to a lesser extent, Rehan Ahmed, all having their moments against India’s crease-tied batters, who did just enough to end up on the right side of the result.
There was no sign of things to come against Bangladesh, clearly out of their depth despite their historic 2-0 victory in Pakistan. The Chennai deck was a throwback to the 1970s and 80s, with plenty of bounce and not inconsiderable pace, while India’s intent and aggression carried the day in a rain-affected Kanpur Test to get Gambhir’s Test stint off on the perfect note. Neither was really a turner in the real sense of the word but for some reason, the management group decided turners were the way to go against New Zealand. Whether it had something to do with managing Bumrah’s workload with the five-match series in Australia imminent is up for debate.
India were undone in Bengaluru by a massive error in reading the pitch and the conditions, but with their stirring riposte in the second innings after being bowled out for 46 in the first, the batting showed that in decent batting conditions, it was more than a handful.
At that point, as they made 462 in their second knock, it seemed as if their lowest Test total at home, which came in the first innings, was an aberration. Subsequent events proved otherwise; India only managed 156, 245, 263 and a measly 121 in the next four innings, on the black-soil slow-burn in Pune and the red-soil surface in Mumbai.
Setting aside the benefit of hindsight, would India have been better off playing on pitches like the ones against England? Without a shadow of doubt. Not only would it have allowed their own formidable batting group to express itself without hesitation and self-doubt, it also wouldn’t have made Mitchell Santner and Ajaz Patel appear unplayable. With due respect to the two left-arm spinners who picked up 13 wickets in Pune and 11 in Mumbai respectively, India’s spinners are vastly more accomplished and would have been a huge threat with their skill through the air alone. By putting out spin-friendly surfaces, India played right into the Kiwis’ hands, which is why their qualification for the final of the World Test Championship for a third cycle running is in serious jeopardy.
India must triumph 4-0 or better to enter the final on their own steam, a mathematical possibility at best, considering that in 77 years of touring Australia involving 13 Test series, the most they have won in a series is two Test matches. Given how low on confidence they are after slumping to their first ever whitewash in a three-Test series at home, 4-0 is a pipedream for now, and particularly so considering Rohit is likely to miss at least the first Test in Perth. Gambhir’s challenge will be to ensure his charges are prepared well enough to at least retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. India have pulled off 2-1 victories in their two previous Test tours of Australia, in 2018-19 and 2020-21 under Shastri. A three-peat will go a long way towards balancing the books because for now, Gambhir is clearly in the red.
It’s perhaps a little unfair on the coach alone to be held responsible for the failure of his wards to tackle the turning ball but that’s how the cookie crumbles in competitive sport. Should there have been an emphasis on greater judiciousness in shot-selection during the last two Tests against New Zealand? Definitely. Win first is an admirable motto and given that the primary objective in sport is to end up on the winning side, that maxim can’t be questioned. But the methodology adopted towards that end needs to be customised, depending on various factors, because an aggressive template alone can’t be the solution every single time.
Gambhir’s tactical, man-management and inspirational skills will be severely tested in Australia, where millions lie in wait ready to rail the one-time angry young man of Indian cricket. In Mumbai last week, a journalist invoked that ‘angry young man’ spirit, sending Gambhir into an embarrassed burst of laughter. “Young man?” he mumbled rhetorically as he left the press conference room. “Look at the white hairs in my beard. And they are only going to become more.” Prophetic, anyone?