The back-to-back ICC Men’s T20 World Cup champions, Team India, begin the new home season with what promises to be a thrilling five-match T20I series against the two-time world champions, West Indies. Team India Head Coach Gautam Gambhir weighed in on working with new T20I captain Shreyas Iyer and his interactions with young Vaibhav Sooryavanshi.
Gautam Gambhir Unfiltered’ ahead of the T20I series against the West Indies, Gambhir opened up on his experience of working with Shreyas Iyer:
“My first experience with Shreyas was when I actually went to KKR in 2024 where he was obviously captaining. And the best thing I liked about Shreyas was that he was actually willing to leave his batting position at times. He was so flexible that he was okay if someone went ahead of him. And it happens very rarely that a captain, who is probably your main batter as well, sacrifices his position for the team’s cause, whether for someone else for impact or from a left-right combination point of view. And that is when I realised that the first and foremost quality of a good leader is how selfless you are. Shreyas has that quality, and that is a massive tick that he can carry for the rest of his journey as a captain. Because you can be hardworking, you can be disciplined, you can be fit, you can be the number one batter. But if you are not selfless, then all those other things stand for nothing. But Shreyas has got all of those things, and on top of that, he’s got that selflessness as well.”
On his conversations with teenage sensation Vaibhav Sooryavanshi:
“It was a new experience for me as well. Yes, he was in good form, but I made him understand that sometimes, because of the players who have done well for a long time, he will have to wait for his opportunity. And there’s one more thing, social media or outside noise doesn’t decide the playing eleven. It depends on who in that dressing room, or who the coach and captain feel can win us the match, or what is the best playing eleven, and who have done well for such a long time. Because if Vaibhav plays today, then it’s going to be a tough conversation between me and whoever we leave out, whether it’s Abhishek or whether it’s Sanju. So, we can’t suddenly ignore a combination that has created such an impact over the last one and a half or two years, and after three or four failures, drop them and play a young player who is very talented, who is also in very good form. So, sometimes you will have to wait for your opportunity because we want to create that security in that dressing room.”
On the importance continuity and making the right calls:
“It is very easy for me to take popular decisions, but it is probably the toughest thing for me to take the right decisions. And we’ve taken the right decision of continuing with Sanju and Abhishek. And no team in the history of sport has gone undefeated from one World Cup to the other and gone on to win the World Cup again. Suddenly, one bad series or three bad games here and there does not make them a bad player or does not make us a bad side. So, it was very important for us to have that continuity.”
