Gambhir’s aggressive approach: a risky gamble or masterstroke?

Team India is out on its first assignment with Gautam Gambhir as the coach. And he is determined to prove the world wrong. “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment,” is his mantra. With that, he has done a terrific job every time he has had an opportunity, as Brett Lee puts it.

Having drawn comparisons to Greg Chappell even before he took the job after a successful stint as head of the coaching and mentor gig at Kolkata Knight Riders, Gambhir’s cricketing aggression gave him the image of a fighter. Now he takes the hot seat at Team India on a mission to find a way to unite his players and graft his team together.

Says Andy Flower, who has handled several important international coaching jobs, “He’s quite a man Gautam Gambhir, I really enjoyed working with him. He’s got strong opinions, he’s got strong clear views on the game. He’s very decisive, loves Indian cricket and his position, representing Indian cricket.”

Former players agree on one thing – Gambhir’s aggression and his attitude to win at any cost will help the team that has found winning ways again after having lost the way for 11 years in World Cups and major ICC events. He knows he has taken over a very successful team who are now the T20 world champions and who were runners-up in the world test championship as well as the ODI World Cup.

All coaches know that a happy dressing room atmosphere is a prime requisite for success, and they try to blend into it, if it exists already. Even a champion cricketer like Rahul Dravid knew it was his humility that would help the team atmosphere more than any haughty opinions on game skills and team combinations.

The challenges

Selection is always a matter of judgement rather than trying to render justice to a player omitted because of team combination rather than the player’s form and fitness. Even Dravid may have erred at crucial times on fixing the playing XI in consultation with captain Rohit Sharma, but he was man enough to accept it.

Gambhir’s challenge will be to choose between his own judgement and that of the captain, to suppress his own opinion at times to support the skipper’s and to thrash out differences when they occur. A strong will to impose his judgment may lead to problems. If Gambhir becomes too strongly opinionated and adamant that everyone should see it his way as Greg Chappell did to become such a hate figure in Indian cricket, he may be in for a rocky time.

“The betterment of Indian cricket is important, Gautam Gambhir is not important,” are the words with which he began his stint while addressing his first media conference as coach. The statement underlines his commitment to the team’s collective success which he places over personal recognition. It wasn’t always like this. Gambhir is not a data-crunching coach. He is known to spot key players not delivering up to their potential and transform them into match winners as he did with a confused Sunil Narine in KKR and injected confidence into him to go for the new ball audaciously without fear of being dropped.

Gambhir can hope to do that with a few fringe players in the national team. If he can convert them into confident cricketers, he can make Team India even stronger. His term begins Saturday in the first T20 in Sri Lanka and judgement on him as coach will come quickly.

The other side of Gautam Gambhir

Not a fan of the star system Gambhir is no lover of the star system that ran Indian cricket for long after Dhoni took over the captaincy from the greats like Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble who had handled it in different styles. But if he tries to upend a system still dependent on Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli to nurse it, he might be in for personality clashes the team can do without.

Felt snubbed

He took it personally when M.S. Dhoni cornered all the glory in the 2011 World Cup triumph though Gambhir was the top scorer in the final with 97. With a breezy enough 75, he had also made the top score in the T20 triumph of 2007. And he made his grievances public about non-recognition of key contributors after Dhoni stole the spotlight with that winning six.

Highly opinionated

Gambhir is opinionated, sometimes too strongly so. Krish Srikkanth, in his no-holds barred presentation on YouTube slammed Gambhir for changing his stance. “Before the T20 World Cup, he was saying if Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma do not perform, they will not sit in his team. Then he took a U-turn saying there are no players like Rohit and Virat. He thinks both can play the next ODI World Cup in 2027. Rohit Sharma at 40 will faint in South Africa if he plays in the World Cup at 40.”

Cold vibes with Virat Kohli

Gambhir’s spat with Kohli in the Delhi team and subsequent cold vibes are well-known. He has shown the ability to get over them with some warm interactions during the IPL and after. As national coach, he cannot afford to have such personal run-ins with star players.

Selection is always a matter of judgement rather than trying to render justice to a player omitted because of team combination rather than the player’s form and fitness. Even Dravid may have erred at crucial times on fixing the playing XI in consultation with captain Rohit Sharma, but he was man enough to accept it.