Individuals who know Gautam Gambhir, describe him as someone “boringly consistent”, someone who has not even modified his eating pattern within the last 20 years. An experiment is out of query. He loves wearing his denims for casual gatherings and it has not modified for years. But in relation to cricket, his brain is all the time ticking and searching for solutions to numerous strategic problems. It has been eight months since Gambhir took charge of the national team after Rahul Dravid ended his stint with the T20 World Cup triumph in July. The person from Delhi’s Old Rajinder Nagar has witnessed some heartbreaking and baffling defeats in addition to success. He has seen each ends of the spectrum with high of Champions Trophy and low of six Test losses.
The CT win has come like a breath of fresh air and ‘Guru Gambhir’ will get a probability to analyse the large picture as Indian cricket is anticipated to undergo a sea-change in the subsequent two crucial years.
It won’t be flawed to say that Gambhir has accomplished his probation period and can get right into a phase where he would have three distinct challenges, starting with the Test tour of England.
That will probably be, as usual, right after the T20 spectacle referred to as IPL with no time for preparation.
His second big challenge will probably be the 2026 T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka where Suryakumar Yadav’s men will probably be defending their title.
And last but definitely not the least is 2027 ODI World Cup in South Africa, which will probably be a helluva challenge.
If one segregates Gambhir’s coaching across formats, he has already built a superb core for the T20 team with Surya on the helm. At the same time as Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja walked into the sunset in shortest format, their absence was hardly felt as the brand new brand of cricket that India has been playing in T20 is earning them fans globally.
He has unearthed a gem in Abhishek Sharma.
When Varun Chakravarthy and Jasprit Bumrah would bowl during a worldwide meet (World T20) those eight overs could be a nightmare for batters. Sanju Samson has found his mojo although Rishabh Pant will probably be around and so could be Yashasvi Jaiswal.
There’s a prolific powerplay wicket-taker in Arshdeep Singh and a minimum of three seam all-rounders in Hardik Pandya, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Shivam Dube.
Surya and Axar together with Hardik are old guards on this team. It’s a team which has all its bases covered and is running on auto-pilot with a tweak here and there.
Nevertheless it is the opposite two formats where Gambhir, the strategist, the disciplinarian and the man-manager would must merge for results.
Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have made it clear that they will not be retiring from ODIs anytime soon. Retirement is a person call and each have performed in Champions Trophy.
But in the course of the 2027 World Cup Gambhir won’t have the choice of using 4 specialist spinners and create magic with totals in range of 240-250.
Scores will probably be on higher side and the query is that if Rohit together with his short and aggressive bursts can do enough together with Kohli, who’s now more of an anchor now.
Rohit has said that he won’t retire but was also unsure of his participation within the 2027 World Cup. Here, Gambhir can have to step in. Gambhir’s, ‘team first’ philosophy won’t change.
He loaths the superstar culture. He has immense respect for performers which is seniority neutral.
It can not be a surprise if he demands a little bit of clarity each from the board in addition to national selection committee as to how they plan to see Rohit in ODI scheme of things with only 27 ODI games ahead of World Cup.
One other issue to ponder over could be the subsequent captain? Shubman Gill is a terrific ODI player and has been Rohit’s deputy but Hardik Pandya can be a very good leader, who believes in implementing the coach’s technique to the ‘T’.
He did that well in Gujarat Titans with one other football team-like head coach Ashish Nehra on the helm.
In immediate future, Gambhir may also must take care of Test cricket squad where he would face the utmost challenge.
In case Rohit plays and has Jaiswal and KL Rahul in top-three, where will it place Shubman Gill, the Test cricketer.
Will he get all three Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and Mohammad Siraj in best shape for the series where swing and seam will probably be the order of the day.
And what happens to that one middle-order slot that has been India’s Achilles heel for a while. Shall Karun Nair slot in there or Shreyas Iyer should regain his Test place? ‘Guru Gambhir’ has some really tough selections to make but he has never been afraid of creating daring decisions.
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