Did India head coach Gautam Gambhir take a tacit attack at Rishabh Pant, the stand-in skipper in the lost Guwahati Test, lamenting Pant’s shot selection in India’s first innings?
Gambhir is in the firing line as India have lost two home Test series out of the last three in his tenure. With the fans still reeling from the 3-0 shock whitewash that New Zealand handed Rohit Sharma’s side last year, their plight was worsened by South Africa, who registered their first Test series win in India in 25 years with a 2-0 sweep.
Temba Bavuma’s ICC World Test Champions snatched the Kolkata Test by 30 runs before giving India a beating for ages in Guwahati: India suffered their heaviest ever defeat in Test cricket in terms of runs with their 408-run defeat in the IND vs SA 2nd Test.
Gambhir attributed the Guwahati defeat to the batting collapse in India’s first innings as they went from 95/1 to 122/7 when replying to South Africa’s first innings total of 489. India could never recover from that phase.
This collapse included Rishabh Pant’s dismissal via a questionable shot: Pant danced down the track to swipe Marco Jansen but managed a thin edge through to the keeper.
In his post-match press conference, Gambhir seemed to express his frustrations with Pant’s choice of shot.
Gambhir said,
“It comes from care. How much you care about the dressing room and the team. Because accountability and the game situation can never be taught. You can talk about skills, you can work on skills, you can keep talking about the mental aspect of the game, but ultimately when you go in, if you keep putting the team ahead of your own self, not thinking, ‘this is how I play, and this is how I will get the results, I don’t have plan B,’ so sometimes you will get these kind of collapses as well.
“So for me I think accountability is important. More than the accountability, it’s the care. How much you care about Indian cricket and how much you care about the team and people sitting in the dressing room is important as well.”
Should Gautam Gambhir continue as the coach of the Test team? Gambhir leaves it to BCCI
While India lost only four Test matches at home from 2013 to late 2024, becoming the toughest challenge for any visiting side, they have lost five of their last seven home Tests in a year, all of them under Gambhir.
When asked whether he still feels he should remain the coach of the Indian Test team, Gambhir put the ball in BCCI’s court.
“It is up to BCCI to decide. I’ve said it during my first press conference when I took over as the head coach. Indian cricket is important, I’m not important. And I sit here and say exactly the same thing,” Gambhir asserted.
The action now shifts to white-ball cricket—but not the attention?—as India will host South Africa and then New Zealand for a dose of T20Is and ODIs leading up to the T20 World Cup in February.
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