As the upcoming white ball series against Sri Lanka that starts later in July approaches, Gautam Gambhir has recorded a video for Star Cricket where he shared his thoughts on how to manage injury and workload in players.
Just as he is famous for his direct speaking style, Gambhir asserted that he does not concur with the idea of managing footballers’ injuries and instead advocated them to feature in games of all three formats if they are good enough and have form.
“I am a very strong believer in one thing, that if you are good, you should be playing all the three formats. I don’t think much about ‘injury management’. You got injured, you go and recover. It’s as simple as it gets. You are playing international cricket, and you are good enough – you ask any of the top players – they want to play all the three formats. They don’t want to be labelled as red-ball bowlers or white-ball bowlers,” said Gambhir.
He went over how injuries are normal among athletes and what matters is how they recover from them rather than trying to avoid them even through prevention techniques before noting anything else.
“Injuries are part of sportsmen’s life. And if you play all three formats, when you get injured, we will go back home and then get recovered but still these people should be playing all three formats. I am not a big believer to identify people that okay we are going to keep him for Test matches and we are going to keep him and we are going to manage his injury and workload and stuff,” added Gambhir.
Gambhir is India’s youngest coach at 42 years old who spoke about professional cricketers using their limited span wisely so as not to regret anything at the end of their careers.
“Look, professional cricketers, you got a very small span. When you are playing for your country you want to play as much as you can. When you are in very good form, go ahead and play all the three formats,” said Gambhir.
With Sri Lanka series coming up, there is a hope that Indian team under Gambhir’s no-nonsense approach to all formats will be different.
