My relationship with MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli are the same: Gautam Gambhir

Last month, Kohli, representing Royal Challengers Bangalore and Gambhir, who is the mentor of Lucknow Super Giants were seen exchanging words and had to be separated by the two sets of players, including RCB captain Faf du Plessis and his LSG counterpart KL Rahul.

The incident seemed to have originated following what appeared to be in-game sledging involving Kohli and Lucknow’s Naveen-ul-Haq when the latter came to bat during the chase. Following RCB’s win in an emotionally-charged contest, the two players had to be separated after a conversation during the handshakes took an ugly turn.

In the News18 interview, Gambhir also said that India was not a team-obsessed country but rather a nation obsessed with individuals.

“Our country is not a team-obsessed one but rather an individual-obsessed one. We think of certain individuals to be bigger than the team. In other countries like England, New Zealand and Australia the team is greater than any individual. And the stakeholders of Indian cricket, from broadcasters to media, have unfortunately been reduced to PR agencies. They’ll show just 3 people the whole day. If you have made a 50 and i have also made a 50, if you keep showing one person, everyone will think that he is the only star. The other person will be termed underrated,” he said.

“Who makes a player underrated? The broadcasters do, the experts do and social media does. If you talk about just one player’s performance, the other will be automatically underrated. Both have grafted equally but if one’s performance does not get credited, he/she will always remain underrated. This obsession with individuals is the reason why India have not won any major ICC trophy for a long time.”