During the tenure of Gautam Gambhir as the head coach of the Indian national team, his leadership has experienced dramatic extremes. Conversely, his red ball record includes disappointing home test series losses against New Zealand and South Africa. Former international cricketer Wasim Jaffer recently highlighted that these test defeats alongside the handling of specific squad members constitute the primary drawbacks of Gambhir’s coaching journey.
On the positive side, he successfully steered the squad toward two international titles, securing victory in the Champions Trophy 2025 and the T20 World Cup 2026.
He will definitely feel that had we won those series, we would be at the top of the WTC table. Assessment Of Red Ball Setbacks ‘The mark of those two whitewash series will always be on him, without a doubt. Not just on his CV, but also on the captain and other players. Coming to India and beating them was a final frontier that not many teams had achieved. It was very bad for us to suddenly lose like that. There is a lot of scope for improvement in Test cricket for him. Not just for him, but for the players also,’ Consequences For World Test Championship Campaign This perspective underscores how historic losses disrupted India’s standing.
Specifically, the 3-0 series defeat against New Zealand across October and November 2024 brought a sudden halt to a twelve year streak without a home series defeat. Furthermore, a subsequent zero to two test series loss against South Africa severely damaged India’s ambitions of qualifying for the World Test Championship 2025-27 final.
