Former Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president Sourav Ganguly said on Tuesday that sacking Gautam Gambhir as the men’s head coach is out of the question, but advised the team to ‘get together’ and try to ‘work hard’ to win Tests instead of relying on the pitch all the time.
Ganguly’s comments came after India were beaten by South Africa by 30 runs in the first of two Tests of the home series. This was the ninth Test loss under Gambhir’s mentorship — two more than wins — and the fourth at home. He was the first coach to suffer a home whitewash in a three-match series, when New Zealand beat India 3-0 last year, with the same pattern of spin-heavy pitches backfiring on the home side visible even then.
“No, no, there’s no question of
sacking out of Gautam Gambhir at this stage, but I think as a team, they need to get together and say to themselves that we will work hard to win Test matches because on flat pitches, it’s a lot harder because the opposition will pad, there’ll be big runs scored on the first innings of each team. And in India, surprisingly, you’ll see how the game changes quickly on day four, day five,” Ganguly told India Today.
“So they have to be patient on that. As I said, they have the bowling attack to get 20 wickets as you saw at the Oval on the last day, as you saw in Edgbaston during that series (vs England), so they can do that as well. Swing comes into play in India with the ball getting old. So it’s just a mindset change,” he added.
“And you know, Gautam as a coach and Shubman as a captain did exceptionally well in England on good batting pitches. And I firmly believe that they can do well in India as well,” Ganguly said.
Ganguly’s comments suggesting that India should be content with flatter tracks and let their bowling quality do the job are interesting. The first India-South Africa match was held at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata, and as the president of the Cricket Association of Bengal, he had said before the series that the team had not asked him for a rank-turner — however, after the defeat, he said India were given exactly what they asked for.
The second Test will be played at Guwahati’s Barsapara Stadium, starting on November 22.
