Gautam Gambhir - The downfall of a fighter

Gambhir’s batting has been an extension of his fighting spirit, but somewhere down the line, he has failed to express it where it mattered the most - with his bat

On a characteristically warm Nagpur morning earlier this year, I found myself in the rather unoccupied press box of VCA’s modern cricket facility at a village called Jamtha in the outskirts of Nagpur. A stalwart from one of Team India’s best batting line-ups had arrived on that very morning in the Orange City to represent ONGC in their last BCCI Corporate Trophy fixture, which was to be played against CAG.

Gautam Gambhir, in dire search of form, came in at one-down following Unmukt Chand’s early dismissal. After toiling hard in excess of half an hour, nerves got the better of the Indian opener as he ran himself out for a paltry score of 5, consuming 18 deliveries. Another bad day at the office for the Delhi batsman eventually ended in a defeat for his team.

It was the post-match reaction that then revealed the left-hander’s journey since being dropped from the Indian team. He refrained from replying to journalists, while the questions that he entertained never received anything but one-word replies. As for the groundsmen and a handful of fans in search of pictures and autographs, they also had to return empty handed.

Apart from a string of inconsistent performances, the double World Cup winner has found himself in absolute disarray with his attitude on and off the field lately. He cut a shallow figure in the last edition of the Indian Premier League by getting involved in ugly spats first with his Delhi teammate Virat Kohli and then with the legendary Rahul Dravid. Allegations raised by the the Delhi pitch curator bear further testimony to the same.

According to a media report in December 2012, Indian captain MS Dhoni, unhappy with Gambhir’s “attitude and on-field ethics”, had lodged a complaint against him with the BCCI. The factors seem to have brought his career’s downfall.

Heated exchange of words betwen Gautam Gambhir and Virat Kohli during the 2013 edition of IPL. (File Photo)

After staging close to half a dozen comebacks in the national side since his debut in 2003, Gambhir finally cemented his place in all the three formats of the game during the 2007/08 season. Recovering from a ‘quitting the game’ stance as a result of being ignored for the 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean, he struck a rich vein of form between 2008 and the 2011 World Cup.

A heartening show in the inaugural World T20 coupled with a gritty display against the spin duo of Muttiah Muralitharan and Ajantha Mendis later that season paved the road to his permanency in the national side. He amassed eight hundreds in the next 13 Tests in all sorts of causes, the close to 11-hour marathon in Napier being right up there among the top performances by an Indian outside the sub-continent. The glorious inside-out drives over cover, the ability to rotate strike, strength against spin and the subtle change of gears made him a complete package as an opener and definitely a joy to watch.

The Arjuna awardee then put up a resilient 97 in the 2011 World Cup final to bag a unique distinction of top-scoring in both the finals of the World Cups that his team has won, a fact that is relatively less publicised. Meanwhile Mahendra Singh Dhoni took home the honours of the man of the match that night for his undefeated 90-odd. It went well with the bandwagon of exhilarated Indian fans that went berserk after his match-winning hoick over long on, but the 2009 ICC Test Player of The Year could have felt robbed of his deserved title. Perhaps such ‘under-recognition’ did not go well with the aggressive opener ever since. It started to play on his mind and reflected upon his attitude which had previously always been about the team coming first.

Subsequent to India’s triumph of the 50-over World Cup, the team went from magnificent to ridiculous, especially in Tests. The embarrassing defeats in England and Australia planted seeds towards the retirement of several Indian batting legends while Gambhir went unpunished, but not for long. As the team’s performances dwindled, rumours of constant tiffs in the dressing room kept making their way into the media. It was the home series against the Englishmen that brought about his axing from the longer format. In the ODI series that followed, his dismal show with the bat finally cost him his place in the shorter version of the game too.

Gambhir walks back after a fourth consecutive dismal knock in the ongoing season of IPL.

Presently with a flood of talented batters making names for themselves at the domestic level, having to compete for a place in the national side has come as an unwelcome preposition in Gambhir’s career.

Though he was unlucky to have missed out on a Champions Trophy berth last year, he hasn’t completely lived up to the expectations either. Apart from a few good knocks in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and a hundred during his county stint, the once prolific run-getter in the domestic arena has discovered that the road to recovery is not a bed of roses this time around.

It was the last match of the UAE leg of the latest edition of IPL wherein he managed double figures for the first time in the competition. The captain of the Kolkata franchise could manage just a solitary run in the previous four innings.

Rolling back the years, the southpaw had once marked the tour to Australia during the 2007/08 season as the turning point for him cementing his place in the Indian team. The currently out of favour batsman had then attributed his success to reading the Bhagwad Gita. He had accredited the scripture in helping him reaching a more calm state of mind and overcome the toughest of battles. Be it reverting to the Arjuna-Krishna dialogue yet again or something else to counter the chill wind, the former top-ranked Test batsman in the world sure needs to find ways to get things together before he runs out of time.