Results might be going India’s way in ODI cricket but experts aren’t entirely onboard with the system head coach Gautam Gambhir has put in place in the team. Barring the opening combination, and maybe the No. 3 batter, none of the positions in the team are fully defined. Be it Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul, Hardik Pandya or Axar Patel, the batting positions of these players depend a lot on situations. While former India pacer Zaheer Khan doesn’t mind the strategy, he feels some rules have to be put in place in order to avoid ‘insecurity’ in the team.
The likes of KL Rahul and Hardik Pandya have been batting below Axar Patel, a bowling all-rounder, since the start of the ODI series against England. While the team management feels left-hand-right-hand combination is important to coach Gambhir’s plans, Zaheer feels such a system will come back to haunt him and the team.
“You’ve said that you’ve got to have the flexibility. Number one and two will be there but the others are going to be flexible. Within that flexibility, some rules also apply. There are certain protocols you have to follow. Certain communication needs to happen, which is gonna streamline things. Otherwise, you are creating insecurity, which, at some stage, will come back and hurt you. You don’t want it to be the case. So you’ve got to be prepared to deal with that situation,” Zaheer said in a chat on Cricbuzz when asked to narrate the difference between Gambhir and his predecessor Rahul Dravid.
Zaheer has warned not just Gambhir but others in the Indian think tank too. With the ICC Champions Trophy approaching in a week’s time, the legendary pacer feels a better and more streamlined system needs to be put in place.
“That’s why I said recency bias is something very strong right now. The situation has become dynamic if you have to compare Rahul Dravid’s approach and Gautam Gambhir’s approach. You can say it’s good, bad, or ugly, or you can say how do we adapt. Each individual is a part of this system, be it the senior management or the think tank, be it the players, be it the selectors. They will have to gauge it, and the entire system needs to be streamlined for the wheel to turn properly,” he added.
With only the third ODI to go in the already-decided series, it would be interesting to see what sort of the team combination coach Gambhir and skipper Rohit opt for in the dead-rubber
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