Under Gambhir, India have been a near-infallible white-ball unit as revealed by their rampaging title-winning runs in the Champions Trophy, Asia Cup and T20 World Cup. But Test cricket paints a grim picture. Home whitewashes against New Zealand and South Africa have put a hole in India’s World Test Championship ambitions.
A gruelling trial by spin awaits Indian batters in the two-Test series against Sri Lanka beginning here on Saturday, with head coach Gautam Gambhir’s standing as the country’s red-ball in-charge relying heavily on its outcome.
A string of failures and the subsequent exit of a bunch of support staff — two assistant coaches and a fielding coach — have made the need for rejuvenation for Gambhir and the team immediate.
But this team carries an eerie similarity to the squad that came to these shores in 2017, the last time India played a Test series here. The 2026 squad led by a young captain — Shubman Gill — too is brimming with mid-level seniors and hopefuls, and they are also in need of such a spark that can ignite their journey back to the top. Those string of failures and the subsequent exit of a bunch of support staff — two assistant coaches and a fielding coach — have made the need for rejuvenation for Gambhir and the team immediate. This is not to say that Gambhir will be ousted immediately even if victory eludes the team in the island nations, but the corridors of power will certainly be abuzz with talk about the way forward in the red ball format. So, the situation is not to the liking of this particular Indian team, whose batters struggled massively against the likes of Mitchell Santner and Simon Harmer in the not-so-distant past. The hosts went nearly a year without a Test match before playing in the West Indies in June-July, and skipper Dhananjaya de Silva will have to rally his players around against a stronger team than the Caribbeans.
