Time for Gautam Gambhir To Repay BCCI's Faith After Australia Series Loss

Gautam Gambhir seems to be in a dicy situation after the Test series loss to Australia. This series loss has been a tough one for the Indian fans and the management to digest. The loss has put India out of the WTC final race.

Rahul Dravid left India in a very good position last year. Under him, India won the Border-Gavaskar series at home in 2023-24. He also coached India to T20 World Cup glory in the Caribbean in 2024. He seemed to have brought out the best from the likes of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli.

Dravid did not renew his contract post India's T20 World Cup title win. That was when the Ajit Agarkar-led selection committee decided to rope in Gautam Gambhir as the next India head coach.

Gambhir's aggressive style of coaching in the IPL which took KKR to IPL glory after a decade was much talked about. The BCCI bought into that style of coaching and thus Gambhir was named the next coach of the Indian team.

He was happy to keep aside his differences with Virat Kohli and he appointed Suryakumar Yadav as India's T20I skipper. He also got the support staff he wanted with Abhishek Nayar joining the team as the Assistant coach and Morne Morkel the bowling coach.

He started his tenure with a 3-0 T20I series win in Sri Lanka but lost the ODI series 2-0. India then hosted Bangladesh and won 2-0 in the Test series and 3-0 in the T20Is. Things started going downhill for him since the Test series loss against the Kiwis at home. India headed favourites into the series but was defeated by their own strength of playing spin.

That rang the alarm bells for Gambhir as the WTC final qualification took a huge hit. However, the Australia series was seen as a massive opportunity for a comeback. India started well with the win at Perth. However, the management along with the senior batters did not quite wrestle the momentum after the first Test win.

Poor batting form of Rohit and Kohli added to the woes of India's batting. Rohit scored just 31 runs in five innings while Kohli scored just 190 across nine innings. The dismissals of both Kohli and Rohit were identical throughout the Test series. While Rohit was beaten on the inside edge, Kohli's outside off-stump weakness was exposed badly by the Aussie bowlers.

Sunil Gavaskar Targets Gautam Gambhir And His Support Staff

It seemed like the coach Gambhir and support staff was able to help Kohli or Rohit sort out their technical problems. Former Indian skipper Sunil Gavaskar too spoke about it to Star Sports blaming the management for not helping the senior batters sort out their problems.

“What was your coaching staff doing – the bowling coach, the batting coach? Against New Zealand, when we had been bowled for 46; and the way we were defeated in the remaining matches, our batting was not strong enough. Here (in Australia) also our batting was not strong enough. So questions should be asked, what have you guys done? Why can’t we see any improvement?” Gavaskar asked on Star Sports.

So far, Gautam Gambhir as a coach has won just three out of the 10 Test matches and lost six. Starting with the Test series against England in June later this year, it's payback time for Gautam Gambhir.