Rarely does a sportsperson puts across his point as straightforwardly as Gautam Gambhir. The World Cup winner often takes no prisoners in dealing with things that he believes in. Rarely has Indian cricket seen such an outspoken, fierce cricketer who has delivered results while playing and while mentoring IPL teams too. Under him, Lucknow Super Giants reached the IPL playoffs for two straight times. This year, as Kolkata Knight Ridders mentor, Gambhir has seen his team enter the playoffs.
According to a report in ESPNCricinfo, Gambhir has been approached to be the new coach of the Indian cricket team. Recentllt, he opened up of all things cricket in an interaction with Ravichandran Ashwin.
In a chat show on YouTube, Ashwin asked Gambhir, “What is spirit of cricket? What is a gentlemanly behaviour?”
Gambhir replied: “If you ask me, nothing. Spirit of the game, everyone plays within the spirit of the game. Whatever is written in laws, you’ve got all the right to use it. You’ve not done any match fixing and not tampered with the ball. You’ve got all the right to play hard. And got all the right to win a game of cricket within the rules of the game irrespective of how you win. That’s about it and that is what is the spirit of the game.”
Ashwin then picked up an incident from the IPL 2023, involving Gambhir’s then team Lucknow Super Giants and Royal Challengers Bengaluru. In that match, RCB’s Harshal Patel tried to run out LSG’s Ravi Bishnoi at the non-striker’s end. Ashwin asked Gambhir, has Bishnoi been run out would he have been sad.
“I would have been fine with it. The only thing I was not happy about was when Harshal turned around and tried to run out the batter. Probably he jumped to far. I would have been fine with it because it was the non-strikers responsibility to hold its ground. And that is something. Had Bishnoi got mankaded, I would have been fine with it. know obviously I might have been sad because we wouldn’t have won
that game. But then it’s up to the non-strikers. Absolutely,” Gambhir replied.
