India’s head coach, Gautam Gambhir, has expressed the emotional toll of his decision to leave Sanju Samson out of the T20I squad for the series in England. Gambhir stated that selecting the young batting talent Vaibhav Suryavanshi over the experienced Samson kept him awake all night, marking it as the most challenging choice of his coaching career in T20 cricket.
“Because ultimately you are there and when you are playing for India, or when you are coaching India, you want to win each and every series possible. Because vaibhav was in that kind of form, and we needed someone to score runs at the top, we needed that little bit of a platform at the top as well, i had a very, very honest conversation with him and I told him that that is one of the reasons why,. India had to drop Samson, the Player of the Tournament in this year’s T20 World Cup triumph, after the first T20I of the five-match series in England in July, which the visitors lost. Gambhir signed off by asserting that short-term stumbles should not trigger knee-jerk reactions in India T20I set-up. “For two years, imagine, you imagine we won the World Cup – which team in the history of sport has gone undefeated from one World Cup to the other and gone on to win the World Cup?
And that’s a conversation which me and Sanju had, and he took it in good spirits,” said Gambhir to JioStar ahead of the start of India’s home season via three ODIs and five T20Is against the West Indies. He was replaced by Sooryavanshi, who made his T20I debut in Manchester. And he was fine with it.
“It didn’t take these guys 17 years to win the second World Cup. It took these guys only 17 months to win the third World Cup. Because i knew that it was probably the toughest decision in my coaching tenure in a T20 format because someone who was player of the tournament, and then you have to leave him out after three or four games, “In two years of my journey, that was the only night I could not sleep and I told this to Sanju. Because if Vaibhav plays today, then it’s going to be a tough conversation between me and whoever we leave out, whether it’s Abhishek or Sanju, playing eleven who, in that dressing room, or who the coach and captain feel can win us the match, or what is the best playing eleven, and who have done well for such a long time.
And the reason was probably Vaibhav was in that kind of form as well, and we had to win the series. “There’s one more thing – social media or outside noise doesn’t decide the playing eleven. “So we can’t suddenly ignore that a combination that has created such an impact over the last one and a half or two years, that after three or four failures we drop them and play a young player who is very talented, who is also in very good form. “He was so flexible that he was okay if someone goes ahead of him and it happens very rarely that a captain, who is probably your main batter as well, sacrifices his position for the team’s cause, whether for someone else for impact or from a left-hand, right-hand combination point of view, he is willing to sacrifice his position. Suddenly one bad series or three bad games here and there does not make them a bad player or does not make us a bad side. So it was very important for us to have that continuity.”
