Gambhir's India – close fights, costly calls, and a growing Test crisis
Eighteen Tests into his tenure, a world-class attack and a promising batting group haven’t yet translated into results, and questions may grow louder if India lose this series
Karthik Krishnaswamy19-Nov-20253:11
‘Gambhir should be doing much better with the players at his disposal’
We win as a team, we lose as a team.It’s a line Gautam Gambhir uses often in his press conferences, usually in reply to questions highlighting individual success or failure. It’s not about the individual. That’s another pet Gambhir line.It might be time, though, to talk about one individual in his group: Gambhir himself.India’s defeat to South Africa at Eden Gardens was their fourth home loss under Gambhir. He has presided over as many home losses, in just over a year, as his three immediate predecessors as head coach – Rahul Dravid, Ravi Shastri (over two stints, including one as team director) and Anil Kumble – did in a decade.Related
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India have won four home Tests under Gambhir – two against Bangladesh, two against West Indies. They presently have a 0-4 home record against New Zealand and South Africa. Overall, home and away, it’s 7-9.It isn’t pretty.There are mitigating factors at play. Gambhir took charge of a team in transition, and the retirements of R Ashwin, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma happened under his watch. Each of the home defeats has come on tricky surfaces where small turns of fortune were often decisive and often went against India. Kolkata hinged on many such moments, including the toss – India also lost the toss in Pune and Mumbai against New Zealand – and an injury that restricted Shubman Gill, their captain and key middle-order batter, to facing just three balls in the match. That India lost by only 30 runs in these circumstances suggested they weren’t all that far from winning.But that, in effect, has been India’s issue right through the Gambhir era. This is not the team of MS Dhoni and Duncan Fletcher, which lost 4-0 in England and 4-0 in Australia and 2-1 at home to England. That was a team with a transitioning batting line-up and, more crucially, a wayward, inexperienced attack that was seldom able to keep any opposition under pressure for long periods.Gambhir’s team is not that team. The bowling group is world-class, full of experience, variety and wicket-taking skill. The batting is strong and deep and has shown little sign of missing Kohli or Rohit – though India would love to be able to bring one of them in if Gill misses the Guwahati Test, as they try and work out how to manage a surfeit of left-handed options. The tour of England this summer showed just how prolific India’s young batters can be when the conditions aren’t loaded against them.1:18
Is the pressure mounting on Gambhir, the red-ball coach?
India have competed on at least an even footing in pretty much every Test against strong opposition during Gambhir’s tenure, home and away. They have won Test matches with key players unavailable. They won in Perth with a team featuring two debutants, one batter with just one previous Test cap, and another with just three. They won at Edgbaston and The Oval without their talisman Jasprit Bumrah.And so many of their losses, like Kolkata, have left long trails of what-ifs.The frustrating thing for an India fan is that the what-ifs aren’t just moments that weren’t in anyone’s control. So many of them, instead, concern decisions of selection and strategy that the team management made after careful deliberation.Take the consistent selection of three allrounders in India’s XIs, which, in theory, gives them batting depth until No. 8 as well as six bowling options. It’s one thing to pick such a team in India, where Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar and Axar Patel are legitimate wicket-taking bowlers. To pick Jadeja, Washington and either Nitish Kumar Reddy or Shardul Thakur in Australia and England, at the cost of a fourth frontline wicket-taker, is an entirely different matter.It’s led India to lose control of Test matches from balanced or dominant positions, with the lack of wicket-taking depth haunting them at crucial stages at the MCG, the SCG, Headingley and Lord’s.India have lost four Tests at home under Gautam Gambhir•Getty ImagesIt’s also led to India overbowling their strike bowlers. A direct line can be drawn from India’s selections in Australia to the recurrence of Bumrah’s back issues at the end of that tour, and from there to his rationed appearances in England, which in turn, in concert with India’s stubborn insistence on playing three allrounders, led to Mohammed Siraj taking on a superhuman workload on that tour.The decision to enforce the follow-on against West Indies on a lifeless Delhi pitch last month also seemed consistent with this team management’s tendency to not worry about bowler workloads unless – as in the case of Bumrah in England – they’re forced to.The other strategy decision India have consistently made under Gambhir concerns their choice of home pitches. Every India head coach in recent times has turned to extreme pitches at some point or another when strong opponents have visited, but where defeats on such pitches often led his predecessors to rethink this approach, they have only made Gambhir double down.Now it’s usually a good thing to not let results sway your convictions. Gambhir’s obstinacy, in that sense, is commendable, and any statistician will tell you that four Test matches is too small a sample to prove or disprove his stated reason for wanting pitches with sharp, early turn – that they minimise toss advantage.
Eighteen Tests into his tenure, Gambhir has a record that does no justice to the players at his disposal. There is no indication that his position is under any threat, particularly given his fine white-ball record. Questions, however, might get asked if India lose this series against South Africa.
It can be said with a little more certainty, however, that extremely bowler-friendly pitches tend to narrow the skill gap between the stronger and weaker attack in those conditions. India were undoubtedly the attack with more quality, depth and experience of Indian conditions during their series against New Zealand last year. And while Simon Harmer was the best bowler on either side in Kolkata, India still had the better attack, collectively, for the conditions.Over a longer Test match, where seamers and spinners have to come back again and again and maintain their control and intensity over all those spells, which attack would you bet on? The one with Bumrah, Siraj, Kuldeep Yadav, Jadeja, Washington and Axar or the one with Marco Jansen, Wiaan Mulder, Corbin Bosch, Harmer and Keshav Maharaj? If India’s main wicket threats on a typical first-innings Indian pitch – Bumrah, Kuldeep and Jadeja – are all out of the attack, they would still be able to call on bowlers who would keep a lid on the scoring and keep batters in a state of high vigilance. The same wouldn’t necessarily be true of South Africa, even if you could swap in Kagiso Rabada for Bosch.Why play on minefields then?The answer to this may well be the same as the answer to the allrounders-instead-of-frontline-bowlers question: a lack of belief, a constant underestimation of the talent India have at their disposal.As useful as their batting depth was in England, it probably did not make up for their lack of wicket-taking edge at crucial moments, and India’s top order showed, even in their first series without Kohli and Rohit, that they did not need that extra security. And while India’s spinners can be unplayable on square turners, they can be a consistent threat on normal pitches too.All this almost seems obvious from the outside, but all of us with that outside perspective have little, if anything, at stake. Gambhir is right in the thick of it, and every win and loss goes on his CV. Being in that position can sometimes lead you to question if the resources you have are good enough, and to reach for seeming failsafes that guarantee nothing and come with hidden costs.Eighteen Tests into his tenure, Gambhir has a record that does no justice to the players at his disposal. There is no indication that his position is under any threat, particularly given his fine white-ball record. Questions, however, might get asked if India lose this series and leave themselves with a treacherous route to the World Test Championship final. It might be in his best interests, then, to start showing a little more trust in the quality of his players, and worry a little less about unseen dangers.