Gambhir has revealed that leaving out Sanju Samson for teenage batting sensation Vaibhav Sooryavanshi during the T20I series in England left him awake all night, adding that it was the toughest decision he has had to make in his coaching tenure in the shortest format. From the outside, Gautam Gambhir looks like a person who is assured of his decisions. But even he can have sleepless nights over selection matters.
India had to drop Samson, the Player of the Tournament in this year’s T20 World Cup triumph, after the first T20I of the five-match series in England in July, which the visitors lost. “For two years, imagine, we won the World Cup. He was replaced by Sooryavanshi, who made his T20I debut in Manchester. Vaibhav was in that kind of form, and we needed someone to score runs at the top. We needed that little bit of a platform at the top as well. And he was fine with it. Which team in the history of sport has gone undefeated from one World Cup to the next and gone on to win the World Cup? Suddenly, one bad series or three bad games here and there do not make them bad players or make us a bad side. So it was very important for us to have that continuity.”
“Because ultimately you are there and, when you are playing for India or coaching India, you want to win each and every series possible. Samson returned to the playing XI at the expense of Sooryavanshi in the 3-0 series win over Afghanistan, including hitting consecutive fifties. “It didn’t take these guys 17 years to win a second World Cup. It took them only 17 months to win a third World Cup.
I had a very, very honest conversation with him and told him that was one of the reasons why. That’s a conversation that Sanju and I had, and he took it in good spirits,” Gambhir told JioStar ahead of the start of India’s home season, comprising three ODIs and five T20Is against the West Indies.
Someone who was the Player of the Tournament, and then you have to leave him out after three or four games. And the reason was probably that Vaibhav was in that kind of form as well, and we had to win the series. “There’s one more thing: social media or outside noise doesn’t decide the playing XI. The playing XI is decided by who, in that dressing room, the coach and captain feel can win us the match, what the best playing XI is, and who has done well for such a long time. “So we can’t suddenly ignore a combination that has created such an impact over the last one and a half to two years, and after three or four failures drop them and play a young player who is very talented and also in very good form. “He was so flexible that he was okay if someone went ahead of him. 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’s impact or from a left-hand-right-hand combination point of view. He is willing to sacrifice his position.
Because i knew that it was probably the toughest decision in my coaching tenure in the T20 format, “In two years of my journey, that was the only night I could not sleep, and I told this to Sanju. 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 Sanju.
