Finally exactly after 507 days of being appointed as Head Coach of India's Senior Cricket Team, do I gather the time , willingness and intensity to write about a megalomaniac idiot ( seldom am I so harsh in social media about some one whom I dont like or I chose to use unforgiving words). I have tweeted, written on FB and other places - even an online article for a leading Bengali Portal , many a time about Gautam Gambhir and vented my frustration, but a full blog dedicated - perhaps for the first time. Probably the frustration that he has survived and not being AXED even after such a shameful debacle leads me to write about him - a rare species of a grandiose which we have seldom witnessed in 93 years of Indian Cricket even when it was ruled by the Rulers.
The nail in the coffin was driven on July 09,2024 when the CAC ( Cricket advisory committee ) comprising of Mr. Ashok Malhotra, Mr. Jatin Paranjpe & Ms. Sulakshana Naik unanimously recommended Gautam Gambhir as the Head Coach of Team India ( Senior Men).
The BCCI had invited applications for the said position on May 13 2024 to appoint Rahul Dravid's successor, whose term got over post ICC T20 World Cup, 2024.
Initially Gambhir had no chance or design to replace Rahul as the contenders were : VVS Laxman, Ricky Ponting, Stephen Fleming and Mahela Jayawardene . Laxman was reluctant to stay away from home for a long period as would be the case with Head Coach role and we dont know the reason why Ponting was not selected and discussions fell apart with Fleming and Jayawardene midway through, probably financial conditions being the primary constraint but whatever may be the reasons , one persons' miss was another person's gain and hereby started one of the most dark phases of Indian Cricket.
A cursory glance at Gambhir's career tells us he was a very average player . His away record in SENA countries specially in AUSTRALIA & ENGLAND is shocking - hardly inspires any confidence !!
4154 runs from 58 matches @ 41.95 doesnt instil great confidence. However there have been many succesful coaches with far less credentials than Gambhir - Dave Whatmore, Late Bob Woolmer. Hence Gambhir's success with Indian Senior team like his predecessors - Dravid & Shastri should have happened , specially when the team was slowly moving into a transition phase.
The main problem that has stemmed in the last 507 days has been the man's horrible megalomaniacness and his singular obstinacy to do what he feels right. Test match cricket is not ODI /T20 that you can get away making mistakes one after another - it examines skill sets at the highest level - patience , endurance , temperament and last but not the least slogging for endless overs - a quality which Gambhir surprisingly had when he played for India .
The little success Gambhir has had as a captain/mentor has been at the IPL level with KKR. They say - " little learning is dangerous learning ." Similarly Gambhir's head tilted badly when he achieved those successes and set about doing an encore with a much tougher assignment.
The important question here is - why Gambhir was selected as Coach when people at the helm knew he was more of a white ball champ ? with no tested credential in red ball and with a volatile temperament , why was he given this monumental job ? Here in lies the inherent sickness of Indian Cricket. Since Independence , Indian Sports have always been dominated by Politics - more so by the ruling party at Centre . Cricket being more than a religion and the mother of all sports in India and the one which makes maximum money has always bowed down and succumbed to the red eyes of the snollygoster politicians . This is a history of Indian Cricket.
BCCI ( The Board of Cricket for Control In India ) has always been one way or the other a function of the party at the Centre - a branch or an artery of whats happening at the Loksabha / Rajyasabha . Little then is the surprise that Gambhir a BJP MP from 2019-2024 was given this mighty post ahead of many deserving others. I have not an iota of doubt and have been saying in many social forums that GG is not a red ball coach - his coaching credentials alone are not enough to garner him this prize post. Its only his linkage with the current political system prevalent in India that has landed him this high profile job no two ways about it .
Now lets look at the mistakes Gautam Gambhir has been making since he took over as Head Coach of India - am looking only at his gaping red ball mistakes. My article is also about why he is not at all a RED BALL coach material.
Lets look at Gambhir's record in Tests as coach since taking over in July 2024 :
Against Bangladesh at Home - 2-0 Against Australia Away 1-3 ( 1 draw)
Against New Zealand at Home 0-3 Against England Away 2-2 (1 draw)
Against West Indies at Home 2-0
Against South Africa at Home 0-2
Gambhir's overall record since taking over :
Not withstanding Minnows Bangladesh and West Indies - Gambhir as coach has swallowed many undigestable pills
- First Indian Coach to lose 5 home tests
- India's 408 run loss is their biggest in the history of their longest format
- In their 93 years long history of Test Cricket , only 3 times have India lost all the matches of a series at home - two out of the three times under Gambhir as coach - Nov '24 against NZ 0-3 and Nov'25 against Sa 0-2. Some shame indeed !!
- The first and overwhelming weakness that he has is his dictatorial approach to the game which is destroying Indian Cricket - systematic elimination of seniors from the side in order to clamp his superiority and Hitler like approach . The way he treated /forced Ravi Ashwin to retire midway through BGT and then forced Kohli and Rohit to retire in the longer version without getting involved in the scene speaks volumes of his calibre as a politician and not as a Cricket Strategist.
- The continous sidelining of Shreyas Iyer, Mohmd Shami, Sarfraz Khan from the side when the team is suffering from lack of specialist is pointing to a major weakness in his armoury as a Coach.
- - The over dependence on make shift players like Nitish Reddy , Harshit Rana and Sai Sudarshan at No.3 ( whose not ready for Test Cricket yet ) time and again thereby paving way for big losses certainly speaks volumes about his inability to coach Indian side at the highest level with acumen and strategy .
Playing according to conditions , opposition team , their strengths are few of the attributes a coach must have at this level . Unfortunately Gambhir lacks in all of them - Agreed that Kohli and Rohit were almost spent forces in Red Ball but arm twisting them to retire hasnt gone well neither with fans nor with India's dismal performance post him taking over. As I reiterated a little while ago , phasing out has to be in a way that doesnt create problems for the team's performance and thats exactly where India has been hurt most . Clearly Gambhir isnt the man for the job.
However , Gambhir being an important member of the current ruling dispensation at the top knows very well that he will never be questioned for his failures and thats exactly whats happening even after such gaping and harrowing losses. BJP rules India and BCCI in such a way that a mere opposition or a voice will soon be lost or buried or suppressed in such a horrifying manner that no one would ever dare to resurface again and the same carries in Cricket as well. This all time cushion helps Gambhir to spread his lunacy and madness in a way thats totally unacceptable for Test Cricket and the sufferer is Indian Cricket. Already in 11 months Gambhir has taken the team to such a new low which we are ashamed to think off.
All lost ? - All is hopefully not lost but will soon be. Gambhir's ego , his bewildering stubbornness , his one track singular stupidity , his inability to understand the game at the highest level , all of these are taking Indian senior men's team to annihilation soon - we didnt qualify for 2023-2025 WTC finals and chances are that we will not qualify for the 2025-27 cycle as well. At the time of writing this article , India is languishing at the 5th position in the cycle and with 2 away matches against WI and NZ to go middle of 2026 and then a full 5 match against the runners up of WTC Australia at home - India will have to win 8/9 matches or 7/9 matches to be in the finals - PTC wise. That looks a very tall rather impossible order.
BCCI either doesnt pay much attention to Test Cricket but only says so , or gets their losses covered in the longer format by garnering uncouth amount of money from IPL and overseas T20 series' which more than makes up for the paltry crowds at the grounds. Sooner or later BCCI will have to realise that once the sponsors will turn themselves away it will be very difficult even for the power hungry dirty BJP to prevent the slide thats started - the signs are ominous in Test Cricket with Gambhir taking the system for a ride - and the end is not far. One hopes that good senses will prevail sooner so that the mighty and haughty be replaced else its not far away that India will face the same fate which befell the mighty West Indies in 1995. Arrogance doesn't pay in SPORTS neither does madness.
