India’s head coach Gautam Gambhir recently shared insights on his philosophy that he has installed in the Team since he has taken the charge. Further he mentioned that those have stayed absolutely consistent till now. Gambhir took the responsibility starting from the Sri Lanka tour after the 2024 T20 World Cup a period that marked the new era of Indian Team.
In an interview with BCCI, Gambhir spoke in detail about India’s approach in T20 format and the fact that it gives priority to flexibility and impact rather than focusing on traditional batting styles. He emphasised that in modern T20 cricket stability in batting order beyond the opening pair has limited significance.
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“That has been the ideology from day one when I took over as the head coach, from Sri Lanka till now. It has not changed. I think batting orders are very overrated, except the openers, obviously. The two openers are permanent, the rest, I think, everything shuffles, because it is not the amount of runs that matter in T20 cricket, it’s the impact that matters. People sometimes miscalculate or do not differentiate between the batting order, the runs, and the impact,” Gambhir told BCCI in an interview after the Australia tour.
The focus is more on adaptability and aggression over statistics. In the T20 format, Abhishek Sharma and Shubman Gill are already established as openers and players like Suryakumar Yadav, Tilak Varma, Shivam Dube, Sanju Samson and Axar Patel handle the batting well in middle order.
“That’s the reason from day one, I think it has been a fluid batting order, and that is how we want to play the game. We don’t want to play a game thinking about averages, strike rates, and all that stuff,” Gambhir added.
