Gautam Gambhir began his Indian team head coach career by leading his team to a 3-0 T20I series victory against Sri Lanka at Pallekele.
India won the first Twenty-Twenty International by 43 runs on Saturday, the second one by 7 wickets (DLS) on Sunday and the last one through Super Over on Tuesday.
The official X handle of the Indian cricket board (BCCI) posted a video on Wednesday in which Gambhir and Hardik Pandya addressed players in the dressing room.
Gambhir said “Guys congratulations on a great series win. Congratulations to Surya as well, outstanding captaincy and more importantly with the bat as well. Guys, I asked for something before the start of this game and you guys absolutely delivered it. This is what happens when you keep fighting, when you don’t give up; these kind of games will happen. You just keep fighting your way into each ball, every run fight like that okay. And we always talk about these games aren’t we getting better? We are improving our skills constantly because we need to still get better on playing wickets like these because we might end up getting such kinds of wickets also. Therefore, as soon as possible let us evaluate situation and conditions in order to know exactly what par score is. There is a lot of learning from this game but more important than anything else this is a great series win.”
Led by Gautam Gambhir in his role as head coach and captained by Suryakumar India’s younger lot began well after Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja retired post their T20 World Cup success last month.
Some of those who have not been selected for ODI series will stay out longer, That’s why Gautam Gambhir told them today that “Some of those guys who are not going to be involved in fifty over format will have a longer break, you absolutely deserve it, but make sure when you come back for the Bangladesh series, keep your skills and especially the fitness levels high. Don’t be like I am going to go for that series thinking ok? I can just turn up and probably deliver for the team. Therefore it is important from the fitness perspective that we are right up there in terms of fitness levels. Okay once again congratulations Hardik is going to wrap it up.”
Making four changes to the past playing side India rested Hardik Pandya and Rishabh Pant.
Pandya said “Firstly well done! I think when we batted first, we were put under pressure by the conditions but I think after those early losses Shubman (Gill) and Riyan (Parag) played really well together and had an outstanding partnership. So at that point of time, when you talk about situational awareness, what you both did was very, very important. And from there on at least our bowlers were able to bowl at right areas towards reaching some decent total on board. To me lower order has always been crucial because they have to chip in anyhow and I think Washi (Washington Sundar) got us eight runs as well as Bishi (Ravi Bishnoi).”
In his initial bowling performance in T20 matches Suryakumar Yadav picked two wickets on successive balls after Rinku Singh bowled a fantastic penultimate over where he gave away only 3 runs and took 2 wickets also.
However, India captain of the series Suryakumar Yadav picked Washington Sundar to bowl the Super Over.
Pandya also admired Suryakumar Yadav for his captaincy stating, “As Gauti bhai mentioned, Surya, well done on ensuring that you rotated the bowlers in such a way that showed faith in the bowlers. You have given us some faith in what I have seen as one of your two past few overs. That was quite impressive. And as a bowling group it was immense because everybody contributed towards it. Good job Washi mate, when you win games like this eventually it kind of takes us forward. We are moving step by step. But this was certainly a right step ahead for future and kill it guys who are playing ODIs! Keep going!”
The ODI series between these teams will begin on Friday at Colombo with captain Rohit Sharma returning along with batting mainstay Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer is coming back to team too.
