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Gautam Gambhir’s tactics for India are not bad, they are just not good enough for a team in transition.
Gautam Gambhir has failed to prove his coaching mettle in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. (Image: Sportzpics)
“If I spot anyone laughing, then you’ll see… for 60 overs they should feel hell out there.”
This is often the first revoked statement when someone talks about missing Virat Kohli’s captaincy in Test cricket. It’s what he said to his 10 men before they spread out to try and defend 272 in 60 overs on the final day of the Lord’s Test against England 2021.
They didn’t let England score even half of those runs and took 51.5 overs to bowl them out. It was the pre-BazBall era, of course, but Kohli’s aggressive mobilization of his orchestra truly made it look like the world’s best Test team was torching the most prosaic venue in the world.
But, unlike the common perception, it wasn’t those words — or ‘Kohlism’, as it was infamously called then — that India miss after conceding a 2-1 lead against Australia in the 2024-25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy. It is the bowling attack.
After all, Rohit Sharma isn’t too different from Kohli in being implicit with words. But had he it said to his three all-rounders, Washington Sundar, Ravindra Jadeja and Nitish Kumar Reddy and two overseas Tests-old Akash Deep, all he would have probably got was blank looks.
Kohli had a well-crafted five-man attack: Siraj swung the new ball, Mohammed Shami used the seam movement, Bumrah did both, Ishant Sharma bowled long spells from one end and Jadeja helped them rotate. There was no weakness. That’s why it was hell.
And it’s not as simple as missing Shami. In Rahul Dravid’s last overseas Test as head coach, India didn’t even need to use Jadeja as the four-pronged pace attack of Bumrah, Siraj, Mukesh Kumar and Prasidh Krishna bowled South Africa out for 55 and 176 to win in Cape Town. This was not under Kohli’s captaincy either, but Rohit, and is still one of his best results.
The common mantra of the Kohli-Ravi Shastri and the Rohit-Dravid reins was preferring taking 20 wickets in every Test, whether it’s home or away, and at any cost. India have dropped that under the new head coach Gautam Gambhir’s tutelage.
Gambhir was signed to the position of India men’s all-format head coach after winning the IPL as Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR)’s mentor. Previously, he had only worked with Lucknow Super Giants as the mentor and had no red-ball (or even white-ball) coaching experience.
IPL tactics are what India have got so far from him in Tests. India have moved to a ‘batting-first’ approach, where depth and a bigger variety of bowling options take precedence over the quality of the attack and the ability to regularly bowl the opponent out. This idea hopes that the batters will bat more freely by looking at the depth and thus get more runs — like KKR did in 2024.
Let’s start with Adelaide, where India lost their first Test of this BGT. The visitors bowled with three fast-bowlers in Bumrah, Siraj and Harshit Rana plus two all-rounders in Ravichandran Ashwin and Nitish Kumar Reddy. Rana looked toothless and India allowed Australia to score 337 runs in the second innings in helpful pace conditions which was a point of no return.
At the Gabba, Gambhir and India saw Rana and Ashwin as the problem — not the combination — and brought in Akash Deep and Jadeja. The new additions combined for one wicket in the first innings, again in decently helpful conditions, and Australia went on to score 445. India spent the rest of the rain-marred days chasing the game before it ended in a draw.
At the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), Gambhir finally saw the problem with the combination, but instead of bolstering the pace attack, the bowling options were increased to six via the aforementioned all-rounders. Shubman Gill, who had looked quite comfortable with the bat albeit without the big score, paid the price for being a specialist batter.
The three all-rounders combined to bowl 64 overs across the two innings, just about 10 more than Bumrah’s 53.2. Reddy and Sundar functioned as batting all-rounders, extending the batting lineup to number eight while contributing negligibly with the ball. When they failed with the bat in the second innings, too, India looked like half the team they once were.
It’s also worth looking at Perth, the only Test India have won this series. They played with three frontline fast-bowlers — Bumrah, Siraj and Harshit — and two all-rounders in Sundar and Nitish Kumar Reddy. Harshit took four wickets but not it seems like his ability to bat might have given him the edge over the likes of Prasidh, Akash and Mukesh (who was in contention for the squad).
Conditions in Australia change regularly between extremes for pacers which makes it difficult for a three-pace attack that doesn’t have a spinner as good as Nathan Lyon in using the bounce.
In some phases, everything clicks for pacers in Australia; in others, nothing clicks at all. Playing with just three frontline pace options hurts the team because they have to do the heavy lifting for the entire attack in the bad phases, as these are particularly bad for part-timers and spinners.
And when the third pacer is as unlucky as Akash Deep, it puts all the burden on the first two. Bumrah and Siraj have now bowled 141.2 and 129.1 overs respectively in just four Tests. This tactic heavily depends not just on Bumrah consistently bowling genius spells — which he has been doing — but also on him and Siraj maintaining their fitness under extreme workload.
When no matter how many options you have, the captain keeps turning onto the best two, it effectively becomes a two-man attack against a four-man one of Australia. Bumrah and Siraj can, in the best case, match the hosts and give the Indians good conditions to bat — i.e. Perth — but that won’t happen always.
Seniors’ poor form has complicated things for Gautam Gambhir
Putting all the blame on the new management won’t be right either. Gambhir’s tactics are white-ball-ish and defensive for Tests which favor draws over wins but they are not giving even draws either because the players, most of whom are close to retirement, are not helping him.
Even in the home Test series against New Zealand, he saw Ashwin and Jadeja being outbowled by Sundar, which neither Shastri nor Dravid had to face.
Moreover, unlike his two predecessors, Gambhir has been unlucky to see both Kohli and Rohit hit one of their worst patches of batting form together. They are the only two players in the team who can’t be dropped without off-field ramifications.
This puts a combination where Reddy comes at four and solves Gambhir’s need for an all-round cushion while maintaining batting solidity out of question.
Kohli and Rohit’s poor form also creates the worst condition for an all-rounder heavy team. The only way to get the best out of three all-rounders in the lower-order is giving them good foundations.
If the top-order keeps collapsing, as it did in the second innings in Melbourne, the all-rounders will be regularly exposed either to the new ball or the pressure of chasing a big total against bowlers who are riding momentum.
In a way, Gambhir has reacted to batting issues and the huge thorn of not being able to drop Rohit and Kohli by trying to bolster the depth. This has, in turn, weakened the bowling attack more than he perhaps anticipated, despite Bumrah doing all he can to carry it.
It leaves India in a vicious lose-lose scenario. The batting looks so weak that backtracking from the all-rounder tactic and going to a four-man frontline bowling attack for a must-win Test in Sydney would be like putting a burning house on the mortgage.
But having already reached the extreme point of the strategy he favors, what else can he do? There are at least three careers at stake, and he has only three days to make his mind.
