Former Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) batter Manvinder Bisla has come out in strong support of the Indian head coach Gautam Gambhir, who has been under constant pressure due to poor results in the longest format of the game and white-ball cricket of late.
Speaking on The Bally Baazi YouTube podcast, Bisla has asserted that the Indian cricketing fraternity is too quick to blame Gambhir whenever the Indian team suffers a defeat, rather than holding players accountable.
“There’s one thing that people don’t realise. Nowadays, whenever we lose, the hot topic becomes, ‘Blame everything on Gautam Gambhir.’ So, all the players who didn’t perform well in that series don’t even get discussed,” Manvinder Bisla said on The Bally Baaazi YouTube podcast.
While acknowledging India’s poor results in the red-ball format, Bisla has heaped praise on Gambhir for propelling the Men In Blue to exceptional results in the Champions Trophy, T20 World Cup and the Asia Cup.
“We often don’t realise this. I keep seeing so much criticism on social media. There are so many people who even work around hashtags, and if a particular hashtag is trending, we keep getting reach from it. But there is no doubt that we haven’t dominated Test cricket over the last one-and-a-half to two years. But you also have to look at the fact that within a year, you have won the Champions Trophy, won the Asia Cup, and won the T20 World Cup. That is not a small achievement either,” he added.
“Gautam Gambhir is a huge fighter, and he can give everything he has to win a match. Especially when it comes to Indian cricket, he can even put his life on the line. A lot of people don’t realise how much he understands what it takes to win,” he concluded.
Team India is currently playing the two-match Test series against Sri Lanka.
