Head Coach Gambhir looks to roll back the years and bring part-time bowlers back in Indian cricket.
In the first series of Gautam Gambhir as India’s head coach, Riyan Parag played all three matches due to his slight spin prowess. Rinku Singh bowled the penultimate over when Sri Lanka needed just 9 runs to win, and then captain Suryakumar Yadav came to bowl the final over. Is this all a mere coincidence?
Gautam Gambhir arrived in the Indian team in 2003, when most of India’s batters bowled. Sachin Tendulkar, VirenderSehwag, SouravGanguly, and Yuvraj Singh made the team based on their batting, but their bowling bailed India out in various situations. This continued until the next decade, and India even won the ODI World Cup partly because of these plethoras of bowling options. Yuvraj was the ‘Player of the Tournament’ with 11 wickets to his name along with 343 runs.
The trend died a slow death, with Suresh Raina being the last true batter in the Indian lineup who could roll his arm. Kedar Jadhav was the last player who was handed the ball, but unlike Raina, he wasn’t handed the ball regularly. In the last decade, we’ve seen great batters like Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul, and Shikhar Dhawan be part of the team for at least half a decade, and yet none possessed the ability to give Team India the upper hand with the ball even once.