Sanju Samson is congratulated by head coach Gautam Gambhir. (PTI Photo) “We are a shooting team. These were Gautam Gambhir’s first words to a young and inexperienced Test team led by rookie captain Shubman Gill in England last summer. That one sentence killed the doubts in the dressing room as the team leveled the five-Test series at 2-2.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SIGN UP NOW!Apart from the maximum in England, Gambhir’s test as a head coach was abysmal. However, this T20 World Cup victory is yet another reminder that he has owned the T20 format since taking charge in July 2024. His past experience in franchise cricket and his strength of conviction keep him and his team a step ahead of everyone else in the format.
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That India is now the undisputed powerhouse of T20 cricket has a lot to do with the spread of the IPL. Also coach Gambhir is a product of IPL. Two strong seasons with Lucknow Super Giants followed by a winning season with Kolkata Knight Riders earned him the Team India post vacated by Rahul Dravid.
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Will Gambhir be able to translate his strategies to the ODI and Test formats?
‘Transition’ was the buzzword when he took over. But for Gambhir, it was never about creating a specific template. He didn’t mind making healthy changes to the T20 team that had just lifted the trophy in Barbados. His approach may seem docile at first, but he always leaves plenty of room to take calls on the fly.READ ALSO: High risk, high reward: How ‘Total T20’ fueled India’s march to World Cup gloryGambhir unfailingly uses the “playing for 140 million Indians” rhetoric in his media briefings. Form before reputation was the underlining principle. Captain Suryakumar Yadav has been the only exception as Gambhir believes that the team on the field is led by a person who adapts to his thought process.Gambhir’s calls often bordered on whimsy. He wears his non-populist decisions like a coat of arms. But that’s what the fickle nature of T20 calls for. In retrospect, one could argue that he is too absorbed in the process. It works amazingly well in T20, but can prevent it from maintaining the continuity that the longer formats require. Whether India needs to split the think tank into different formats is still up for debate, but Gambhir has made his displeasure with the proposal clear. He is a proud nonconformist. He got voters to conform to his ideas. Ignoring the likes of Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant and Shreyas Iyer, the biggest young brands in Indian cricket, were cold-blooded calls. Gambhir has always maintained that T20 cricket is a different sport that requires unique skills.At the start of his regime, Indian cricket did not seem ready for such a cultural shift. It has now accepted the change. Sources close to the team management say Sanju Samson has been given a strong message about bad habits creeping into his game just before the T20 World Cup. While Ishan Kishan flourished at the top of the order, Gambhir worked overtime with Samson to remove excessive shuffling deep in the crease and stabilize the batsman’s stance.The only blip came when he sacrificed vice-captain Axar Patel for an undercooked Washington Sundar during the Super-8 defeat to South Africa.Now that he has introduced himself in his strongest format as a tactician, it will be interesting to see how he reboots when the focus shifts to the ODI World Cup in 2027 and the World Test Championship. Will he be flexible enough to schedule longer formats?
