Hyderabad: The Indian Cricket team's newly appointed head coach Gautam Gambhir asserted that all of his aggression, and confrontations come in the best interest of the team and hence the message for the players will be to try and play with honesty.
Gautam Gambhir has represented India in all three formats and is known for his crucial knocks in the T20 World Cup, ODI World Cup finals and his exceptional double century against New Zealand in Napier in 2009. However, despite being announced as a coach, Gambhir's resume includes mentorship experience of three years, but not coaching.
India’s tour of Sri Lanka for three ODI and as many T20Is will be the former cricketer’s first assignment as India’s head coach. However, his support staff is yet to be decided.
"I'm a very strong believer in one thing, that if you're good, you should be playing all the three formats. I've never been a big believer in injury management, you get injured, you go get recovered. As simple as it gets. When you're playing international cricket and you're good enough, you ask any of the top players if they want to play all three formats. They don't want to stay and they don't want to be labelled as red ball bowler or white ball bowler," Gambhir said on Star Sports' recently uploaded video.
"Injuries are part of a sportsman's life. And if you're playing all three formats, you get injured, you go back, get recovered, but you should be playing all three formats. I am not a big believer in identifying people that we're going to keep for test matches or other formats. we're going to manage his injury and workload and stuff. Professional cricketers, you've got a very small span when you're playing for your country and you want to play as much as you can. And when you're in very good form, go ahead and play all the three formats," he added.
Gambhir also shared his thoughts on players choosing formats to play as per their performance and if they are performing good then they should play all three formats.
"There's only one message, that is try and play with honesty. Try to be as honest as you can to your profession. Obviously, results will follow. When I picked up the bat, I never thought of the results. I never thought that I'm going to score this many runs. I've always believed that I have to be as honest as I can to my profession. Live on certain principles, live on certain values," the 42-year-old former left-handed batter said.
"Try and do the right things. Try and do things even if you think the whole world is against you. But your heart believes that you're doing the right thing for the best interest of the team. Whether I've been aggressive on the cricket field, whether I've had confrontations with people, just because it was all in the best interest of the team. Try and do that, because ultimately it's the team that matters, not an individual," he quipped.
"So, go out there and only think of one thing, that is to try and make your team win. Whichever team you play for, because that is what team sports demands. It is not an individual sport where you think about your own self. It is a team sport, where it is the team that comes first. You're probably the last one that comes in the entire line-up," added Gambhir.
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