Former India player Aakash Chopra has said that the pressure is mounting on Team India head coach Gautam Gambhir after the Indian team’s defeat in the first Test against England. He added that the Indian Test side has lost the majority of the games in Gambhir’s tenure as head coach so far as well. Notably, India faced a five-wicket loss to England in the first Test of the five-match Test series in Leeds as well.
In a video shared on his YouTube channel ‘Aakash Chopra,’ he said, “Everyone will be questioned. It’s Indian cricket’s principle. If things go well, everyone is given credit, but when things go wrong, criticism is absolutely obvious. I will still be more patient with Gill because he has become the captain just now. So he will take time to understand things.”
“However, the pressure is mounting on Gautam Gambhir. If you look at his returns in red-ball cricket, you will find that he has won very few matches. They won two matches against Bangladesh, one against Australia, lost three against New Zealand, then lost three against Australia, and then lost one against England. So we are only losing, we aren’t winning,” he further added.
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However, Aakash Chopra also shared why players are being selected for Tests based on IPL performances instead of how they fare in the Ranji Trophy as well.
“I don’t think that’s the case. The selection is happening based on Ranji only. Karun Nair – Ranji, Abhimanyu Easwaran – Ranji. Maybe in the case of bowlers, you sometimes feel that you should go with someone who is looking in good form. However, Shardul Thakur – Ranji,” he added.
“Eventually, you are going with people who have done well in Ranji. So it’s not that you are picking a team for Test matches based on IPL. I would say it’s absolutely right to do that for white-ball cricket, but I feel we are not doing that in Test cricket. We are not giving that much weightage to IPL form for Test cricket, which is a fair thing to do,” Aakash Chopra concluded.
