Gautam Gambhir (centre) with Team India players.© AFP
India head coach Gautam Gambhir is currently under the scanner as he has failed to live up to the expectations since taking up the role from Rahul Dravid. Under him, India beat Bangladesh 2-0 in a Test series before being clean swept by New Zealand 3-0 in the format at home. The trouble has increased for Gambhir as Rohit Sharma and co. are now 1-2 down in the ongoing five-match Test series vs Australia. Such is the situation that India need to win their fifth and final game Down Under to stay in race for World Test Championship Final.
Several reports have also emerged that Gambhir is not in favour of keeping Rohit in the playing XI. Notably, the India Test captain has scored only 31 runs across three matches in the ongoing tour of Australia.
As Gambhir currently has a big say in finalising India’s XI, let’s have a look at the time when he dropped himself from the team for not performing well.
The big incident took place during IPL 2018 when Gambhir, the then Delhi Daredevils captain, had failed to shine with the bat as well as his captaincy.
Gambhir scored only 85 runs in the first six matches and to make things worse, DD (now Delhi Capitals) lost five of those games. Shyreas Iyer was handed over the captaincy of DC. After leading the team to victory against Kolkata Knight Riders in his first game in charge, Iyer revealed that it was rather the decision of Gambhir to drop himself from the playing XI. Colin Munro was the player who was roped in for Gambhir for the game against KKR. He scored 18-ball 33 to provide DC a flying start.
“I didn’t make any call to be honest. It wasn’t my decision to drop him (Gambhir). He himself decided to sit out, which was really courageous decision with him being the captain in the previous matches,” Iyer said in a media interaction after the game.
“The respect for him has gone really high. It’s really (good to) see when a captain, if he’s not playing well, he backs out. Colin (Munro) came in and gave us the desired start.”
As per media reports, Gambhir also decided to not take his Rs 2.8 crore salary from DC, owing to his poor performance.
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