India thrashed South Africa by nine wickets in the third ODI to win the series 2-1 on Saturday, after which a combative head coach Gautam Gambhir came out all guns blazing against the criticism that came his way post the stunning whitewash the hosts suffered against the Proteas in the preceding Test series. Gambhir pointed out, as he did after India’s 408-run defeat in the second Test, that this was a team in transition and that no one acknowledged the effect of losing captain Shubman Gill to injury early in the first Test.
“Look, there were a lot of talks, no doubt, because the results didn’t go in our favor,” Gambhir told reporters in the post-match press conference in Visakhapatnam on Saturday. “But the most surprising thing is that no one – no media, no journal – wrote that we played the first Test match without a captain, who didn’t bat in both innings. And the margin of defeat was 30 runs. Just because I don’t give excuses in press conferences, it doesn’t mean you avoid showing facts to the world or to the country,” Gambhir said.
“When you go through a transition and you lose your captain in that series, who is also the in-form batter in red-ball cricket, who has made around 1000 runs in the last seven Test matches – if you lose your captain against a team as good as this, then obviously it will be difficult to get the results, because there is not much experience in red-ball cricket. And the surprising thing is that no one even talked about this.
“All the discussions about wickets and I don’t know what else. And people who have got nothing to do with cricket have said things. An IPL team owner wrote about split coaching. So this is a surprising thing. It is very important for people to stay in their domain. Because if we don’t go into someone’s domain, then they also don’t have any right to come into our domain.”
India’s defeat in the Test series, apart from being the first against South Africa at home in over 25 years, came shortly on the heels of them being whitewashed at home by New Zealand late last year. This made it two series defeats for Gambhir in Test cricket out of the four he has led in thus far as head coach, prior to which India had been on a record-breaking streak of wins at home in the longest format for over a decade.
India then won the first ODI against South Africa by 17 runs but the Proteas struck back by equalling the record for the highest succesfull run chase against India in ODI history in the second match. It meant that India were on the brink of losing both the Test and ODI series against a visiting team for the first time since 1986/87. However, Prasidh Krishna and Kuldeep Yadav’s four-wicket hauls, followed by a maiden ODI century for Yashasvi Jaiswal and a couple of sublime half-centuries from Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma helped India make light work of South Africa on Saturday.
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