Gautam Gambhir’s appointment as head coach an expected but also a left-field choice
Indian cricket was confirmed on Tuesday evening (July 9) when Jay Shah, secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), announced that Gautam Gambhir would be the next head coach of the senior men’s team.
Gambhir’s appointment is an expected one, an obvious one even, but oddly, also a slightly left-field choice. It was expected in that he was the preferred candidate of the powers that be. It was obvious in that he had relinquished his position as a member of parliament and simultaneously succeeded in guiding his IPL team to a trophy. It’s left field because Gambhir has no previous coaching experience whatsoever.
Gambhir has not coached a state team in the Ranji Trophy, he has not worked with a zonal or national age-group team and even in the IPL. He has been a mentor and a director of cricket of sorts rather than a hands-on coach. In the IPL, Gambhir has had a phalanx of coaches under him to run day-to-day operations while he focussed on the bigger picture.
Several players who have tasted success in the IPL have found, to their dismay, that playing for the national team against international opposition is a different ball game altogether. Gambhir, too, is going to feel this, although he is intelligent enough to know this and anticipate what lies before him.
For starters, in an IPL team, the players and the coaching staff are answerable solely to the owners of the team. The coach has a major say in selecting both the squad at the auction table and playing eleven before each game. In some cases, he
