Rohit Sharma (L) and Gautam Gambhir© AFP
Indian cricket team legend Sunil Gavaskar claimed that the credit for the national team’s aggressive approach during the second Test match against Bangladesh belonged completely to the captain Rohit Sharma. Three days of the match in Kanpur was impacted by rain as well as wet outfield but Rohit and Co came out swinging to clinch the match. The bowlers bundled out Bangladesh twice in two days and the batters broke as many as five batting records in a single day. Gavaskar said that while Bazball is attributed to England coach Brendon McCullum, the ‘Gamball’ reference makes no sense as Gambhir himself never played in a similar manner. Instead, he wanted the approach to be named after Rohit.
“As seen in India last year, this approach doesn’t work in Test matches and may surprise the opposition for a game or two at best. While one paper called the Indian batting “Bossball” because the captain or “boss” of the team, Rohit, had shown the way, some from the old powers referred to it as “Gamball” after the Indian coach, Gautam Gambhir,” Gavaskar wrote in his column for Sportstar.
“While the England batting approach changed completely under the new regime of Ben Stokes and McCullum, we have seen over the last couple of years that Rohit has been batting like this and encouraging his team to do so as well”.
“Gambhir has only been coaching for a couple of months, so attributing this approach to him is foot-licking of the highest quality. Gambhir himself hardly ever batted in this fashion like McCullum used to do. If any credit is due, it is solely to Rohit and nobody else.”
“Instead of using the words this-ball or that-ball, I would suggest using the skipper’s first name, Rohit, and term it the “Gohit” approach. Hopefully, brainier people will come up with a trendier name for this rather than the lazy option of calling it after “Bazball,” the former India skipper added.
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