Cricket, for as soon as, appears to have taken a again seat in India. It is the off-field drama that is grabbing all the eye. The Asia Cup was dominated by gesture wars, handshake snubs and a stolen trophy; now, the build-up to India’s tour of Australia is simply as turbulent — this time over daring choice calls. India’s determination to switch Rohit Sharma with Shubman Gill as ODI captain has fueled infinite chatter a couple of generational shift, overshadowing even the continuing Take a look at sequence towards the West Indies. Some followers may not have realized {that a} Roston Chase-led West Indies facet is at present in India — many most likely found it solely when Gautam Gambhir hosted a workforce dinner in New Delhi, a meal that someway made extra noise than the Take a look at sequence itself.
At a current awards evening, Rohit Sharma was honored for uplifting India’s Champions Trophy triumph. He selected to mirror on India’s success by pointing to the processes that, in his view, underpinned each the 2024 T20 World Cup and the 2025 Champions Trophy.
“Look, I like that workforce it is not about one 12 months or two years of labor — it was years within the making,” he mentioned. Rohit repeatedly referenced the mindset and the method he and Rahul Dravid had instilled throughout their time on the helm of the senior males’s workforce.
GAMBHIR SNUBBED
Throughout that just about ten-minute-long speech, Rohit made no specific reference to the incumbent head coachGautam Gambhir.
That omission is what has set tongues wagging. To be blunt: Gambhir was the official head coach when India lifted the Champions Trophy in Dubai in March 2025, and that truth is tough to gloss over.
Appointed in July 2024, Gambhir didn’t have lots of time to work with the ODI workforce within the lead-up to the Champions Trophy. In reality, India performed solely six ODIs below Gambhir’s watch earlier than they headed to the 50-over showpiece occasion.
There are two defensible readings of Rohit’s wording, and every has benefit.
THE DEFENSIVE
The primary, and the extra charitable, is contextual and historic. Rohit’s eulogy to Dravid shouldn’t be new: when Dravid stepped down after the T20 World Cup triumph in June 2024Rohit posted an emotional tribute calling Dravid a confidant and even referencing the affectionate tag of “work-wife”, underlining a detailed captain-coach bond.
Below Dravid’s stewardship, India consciously rebuilt a mentality that prioritized consistency, self-discipline and, extra importantly, a way of thinking the place the batters shed worry of failure. For lengthy, Indian batters had been taught to be protected and give attention to piling up runs. Proper from childhood coaches to seniors within the dressing room, younger batters had been repeatedly instructed to safe their locations with large scores.
However with the altering panorama of white-ball cricket, Rohit and Dravid gave the dressing room a way of safety and inspired them to prioritize influence over quantity. Rohit led the change from the entrance — a shift that helped the facet recuperate from the heartbreak of the 2023 World Cup ultimate and go on to raise the T20 World Cup in 2024.
Rohit’s level — that the template for fulfillment was laid down over years below Dravid, and that gamers merely carried it ahead — is an easy one. It is usually true that coaches go away buildings behind: good programs are resilient and infrequently outlast the one that first put them in place.
HARD TO DEFEND?
The second studying is about optics and attribution. It’s tougher to defend an omission. Gambhir had been in put up for eight months earlier than the Champions Trophy and, as head coach, he and his employees oversaw the ultimate preparation and match execution. For the general public, to not hear the identify of the person within the dugout in the mean time of victory will look (and really feel) conspicuous.
That’s very true now, when Rohit’s relationship with the workforce’s management is itself below scrutiny: his current substitute as ODI captain by Shubman Gill has solely sharpened the story. When a participant of Rohit’s stature praises the “course of” and factors to a predecessor, it invitations the plain query: why not identify the coach who lifted the cup?
Timing magnifies every little thing.
Rohit’s feedback had been made public simply days later he handed over the ODI armband — an emotionally charged second when each phrase is carefully scrutinized. If there have been any doubts concerning the dressing room’s temperature, the stories of leaks and inner rifts throughout India’s Border-Gavaskar sequence defeat earlier within the 12 months made them abundantly clear.
It is usually value noting that Gambhir inherited a workforce that was removed from excellent. India’s 0-3 dwelling Take a look at sequence loss to New Zealand in October 2024 — the primary such defeat at dwelling in over a decade — got here early in Gambhir’s tenure, with a Take a look at facet largely formed by Dravid. If Dravid will be credited for laying the foundations that led to Champions Trophy success, then it follows that Gambhir can not fairly be blamed for one among his earliest assignments with a workforce he inherited.
SO, HOW TO ADJUCATE?
The protected, and possibly correct, reply is that this: Rohit’s reward of Dravid is each defensible and inadequate. It’s defensible as a result of the Dravid-Rohit period genuinely re-set the workforce’s mindset; Dravid’s fingerprints stay within the self-discipline and self-belief gamers delivered to crunch matches.
However it’s inadequate as a result of public victory rituals are additionally moments of ceremonial recognition. To omit Gambhir’s identify when he was the person in cost on the time is, at minimal, an odd selection; at worst, it feeds narratives of fracture and favoritism that no person desires within the dressing room.
There are two follow-ups that matter. First, intent issues lower than consequence. Whether or not the omission was born of loyalty, behavior, a want to flatter a predecessor, or one thing extra pointed will stay within the realm of personal conversations except one of many principals chooses to spell it out. Second, optics matter — and within the trendy recreation optics can form how a marketing campaign is remembered nearly as a lot because the outcome.
A brief, gracious point out: “and naturally Gambhir and his employees, who noticed us over the road” would have been straightforward and diplomatically neat.
Its absence is what retains the story alive.
In the long run, maybe it wasn’t a snub or an announcement. It’s simply one other reminder that in Indian cricket, every little thing means one thing, even when it does not.
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