Speaking soon after India lost another Test series at home – second in 12 months since he took charge, head coach Gautam Gambhir repeated several times that he doesn’t prefer giving excuses. But right through the 13-odd minute press conference, Gambhir pointed out several times – a young team, his own coaching record and also the scheduling as possible reasons for the defeat against South Africa, which can be termed as excuses.
Straight up, he was asked about where the responsibility starts with for the defeat. He shot back immediately in his characteristic style: “Everyone in that dressing room, and starts with me, to everyone in that dressing room. I’m not going to be someone who’s going to say that it lies with X, Y or Z. It lies with everyone sitting in that room as simple as it can get. That is what team sport is all about,” he began the press conference.
Then he quickly went back to the batting in the first innings, in particular on Day 3 where India lost a cluster of wickets to hand South Africa the advantage which they never let go off. “I’m sure you guys must be watching the game. From 95 for 1 to 120 for 7. It’s not acceptable. And we keep talking about the game obviously (against) spin. But then one seamer got four wickets in that phase. And we’ve had these collapses in the past as well. Someone needs to put their hand up and say that I’m going to stop this. At one stage on Day 3, you were pretty much in control of the game. And then from there, to lose 5 or 6 wickets for nothing on the board literally, was always pushing us back,” Gambhir lamented.
As the questions moved on from the match to an emerging pattern where the Indian team is struggling to counter spinners in home conditions, first up against New Zealand last year and now against South Africa, Gambhir offered a different perspective. “Look, first of all, the series against New Zealand, we had a very different side. And this is a very different side. I’m sure you guys covered a lot of cricket.
And I’m sure when you see this batting line-up, to when you see that batting line-up, the experience that that batting line-up and the experience that that team had, to what this team has, is chalk and cheese. So comparing everything to New Zealand is probably a wrong narrative. You’ve got 4 or 5 players, I don’t give excuses, I’ve never done that in the past and I’ll never do it in the future as well.
But if you see 4 or 5 batters in this top 8, have literally played less than 15 Test matches. And they will grow, they’re learning on the job, they’re learning on the field,” Gambhir said.
While it is a young batting group, in early half of 2024 when the Bazballers were in India, then captain Rohit Sharma and head coach Rahul Dravid, had won the series with younger players as well which saw six of them handed debuts.
Gambhir then pointed out transition as a reason and asked the players be given time: “Test cricket is never easy when you’re playing against a top quality side. So you’ve got to give them time as well. So for me, I think that is something they’ll keep learning. Hopefully they keep learning, that is important. Because I know that I hate using this word transition. This is exactly what transition is. When you’ve got in Test cricket, when you’ve got your batting line-up which has literally played less than 15-20 Test matches, they need time to absorb pressure, they need time to keep getting better against quality attacks and against quality sides,” he said.
Towards the end of the interaction, Gambhir also spoke about the complexities of Indian cricket scheduling. While the Lodha recommendations had mandated a 15-day gap between two series, it hasn’t been practical to implement. After playing white-ball series in Australia, the Indian team landed in Kolkata just four days before the start of the first Test. Gambhir said it also played a part, although he didn’t want to use it as an excuse.
“Look, obviously scheduling does make a difference. Imagine three days back, three days before the start of the first Test match we were in Australia. And suddenly you come back from there and you have to join a Test team and you have got two days to plan with the Test side. But that again is not an excuse and I am not going to give that excuse as well. Sometimes we can probably prioritise this better, we can have more gaps in the middle so that we can probably start working on certain skill sets. Because working for two days on a certain skill set where we always knew that they had quality spinners, they had two really, really experienced spinners. So that would have always been a challenge for the Test side. So that can happen. But yes, there is no excuse from where we were in this Test match to where we lost the momentum. From 95-1 it wasn’t the skill set, it was something else. It was just probably not the mental application,” Gambhir added.
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