“If we hadn’t won this series, no one would have talked about one practice session. Then everyone would have said, ‘oh, how poor is this Indian team that everything has gone wrong after the World Cup’. That’s the reality. It’s no secret that in India, people see only results, nothing else. My job is to prepare the players to the best of their ability and impart knowledge, because I have played in these conditions before in New Zealand.
“So it was important for me to share all that information, and try and keep them in a good space, and try and make sure that they are absolutely aggressive. That is the kind of cricket we have played in the last two, [to] two-and-a-half years – high risk, high reward. We will lose matches – sometimes we will lose one-sided games – and that will happen in future too. But our ideology, our philosophy won’t change.”
Shreyas now has three bilateral T20I series wins as captain after starting his tenure with two series losses. Apart from that, India under Iyer also beat Japan in a one-off T20I and won the gold medal at the Asian Games. Gambhir praised Iyer’s influence on the team, and explained why their performance initially went down before going up.
“Look, obviously, when he took over, he took over a very, very successful T20 team,” Gambhir said. “The team that had won a World Cup, and, more importantly, that hadn’t lost a series in two years. I don’t think so any other team across the globe had done that – that they’ve not lost a single series for two years and gone on to win the World Cup.
“Obviously, we had challenging oppositions as well. After the World Cup, we went to England, and more importantly, we had given a lot of new guys opportunities as well. We did lack a lot of experience, especially when you go to places like England and New Zealand. But this is a great opportunity as well. If you start thinking of building for the next world cup, you’ve got to give young players the opportunity, and try and develop them being on the road as well.
“Yes, Abhishek has struggled against offspin. The more he gets better at it, overall he will become a better player… We were just chatting about that. In the first match too, he got a little tied up against the offspinner. So, be it offspin or when the left-arm spinner was trying to cramp him… it was just a very tactical and technical stuff we spoke about”
Gautam Gambhir on Abhishek Sharma’s problems against offspin
“Because if you see the amount of experience we had during the World Cup and after that the kind of experience we had in the bowling line-up, it is always challenging [for the opposition]. So I thought Shreyas has done a fabulous job with so much of inexperience in the bowling line-up because as a captain you’re only as good as how your bowlers or your batters perform. So especially with an inexperienced attack, he’s done a phenomenal job.”
“Yes, Abhishek has struggled against offspin. The more he gets better at it, overall he will become a better player,” Gambhir said. “And you have to improve yourself because the opposition keeps studying you. The kind of batting you do, the kind of scores you put up, the speed at which you bat. So, if you improve your game against different bowlers, you will get one step ahead of the opposition.
“We were just chatting about that. In the first match too, he got a little tied up against the offspinner. So, be it offspin or when the left-arm spinner was trying to cramp him… it was just a very tactical and technical stuff we spoke about.”
Alagappan Muthu is a senior sub-editor at Cricinfo
