IND vs SA ODI | Sky is the limit for Jaiswal: Gambhir

Such was India’s torrid run with tosses in ODIs that even head coach Gautam Gambhir saw the funny side when the 20-match losing streak finally ended.

“I don’t know about 20-21, but in my tenure, we have won the first toss in ODIs. So it felt like I have won the first match in my tenure,” Gambhir said with a chuckle.

Reflecting on the win, he praised Yashasvi Jaiswal and highlighted how a measured approach took him to his maiden ODI century.

“When you play white-ball cricket after red-ball cricket, you feel that you have to play aggressively. But in one-day cricket, you don’t have to. If you split the one-day format into 30 overs and 20 overs, it will be very easy,” he said.

“The quality that Jaiswal has, if he bats 30 overs, there is no doubt that he will be batting close to 100. He played just his fourth game. The moment he figures out which tempo to bat in the 50-over format, the sky is the limit for him.”

And in typical Gambhir fashion, he was his combative self when reflecting on the Test series defeat and the reaction that followed. “When you go through a transition and when you lose your captain (Shubman Gill), who has made around 1,000 runs in the last six Tests, against such a team, obviously, results are difficult, because there is not much experience in red-ball cricket. The surprising thing is that no one even talked about it.

“People also said things that have nothing to do with cricket. An IPL owner (referring to Delhi Capitals’ Parth Jindal) also wrote about split coaching. It is very important for people to stay in their domain. If we don’t go into someone’s domain, then they have no right to come into ours.”