Team India’s Head Coach, Gautam Gambhir, attended the press conference before departing for Australia. He has directly slammed Ricky Ponting for his comments on Virat Kohli’s position in the team.
Ponting said that any other batter besides Kohli would not have earned their spot in any international Test team with the numbers that Kohli has in the last five years, by scoring two Test centuries in the last five years.
Gambhir has asked Pontiong to focus on his team and leave talking on matters concerning Team India. Now, former India cricketer, Sanjay Manjrekar, has taken a dig at Gambhir on his X profile and asked BCCI to not send Gambhir for further press-conference given that he does not have the right mindset and the choice of words to attend press-conference.
“Just watched Gambhir in the press conference. May be wise for @BCCI to keep him away from such duties, let him work behind the scenes. He does not have the right demeanour nor the words when interacting with them. Rohit & Agarkar, much better guys to front up for the media,” Manjrekar wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Gautam Gambhir focused on winning the Border-Gavaskar Trophy
Team India lost the home Test series against New Zealand by a margin of 3-0. This was the first Test series loss for the side at home since 2012 and the first whitewash suffered in a Test series at home since the time they started playing Test cricket. With this loss, India now need to win the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 4-0 in order to have a chance of qualifying for the WTC final.
Gambhir stated that he is not thinking about the final of the WTC currently and instead is focusing on winning the upcoming BGT. India have won the last two Test series in Australia and have won all the four BGT’s that have happened since the 2014-15 series in Australia.