Gautam Gambhir, who has won two IPL titles as captain, reckons that Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) needs to considering replacing their skipper Virat Kohli for not delivering for 8 long years now. Gambhir also said that he has nothing against Virat Kohli but it’s high time that that the RCB captain should take responsibility for the team’s inconsistency in the Indian Premier League (IPL).
To validate his comments, during a chat with ESPNCricinfo, the former India opener said, “Eight years is a long, long time. Look at what happened to R Ashwin. After two years of captaincy [for the Kings XI Punjab], he couldn’t deliver and he was removed. Dhoni has won three [IPL] titles, Rohit Sharma has won four titles, and that’s the reason they’ve captained for such a long time because they’ve delivered”
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He further added, “I’m sure if Rohit Sharma wouldn’t have delivered for eight years, he would have been removed as well. The problem and the accountability start from the top, not from the management nor the support staff, but from the leader. You’re the leader, you’re the captain. When you get the credit, you should take the criticism as well.”
Despite suffering a loss against Delhi Capitals (DC) Bangalore qualified for the play-offs on the basis of a better Net Run Rate (NRR) than Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). Virat Kohli had said that his team deserved to be in the next stage because of the good cricket it had played. Gautam Gambhir picked that comment to slam Kohli further.
Gambhir elaborated, “You can keep saying ‘we qualified for the playoffs and we deserved to qualify for the playoffs’, absolutely not. RCB actually never deserved to qualify for the playoffs. If you see the last four or five games, and even that one Super Over against Mumbai Indians, they were very fortunate that Navdeep Saini bowled that over brilliantly. Otherwise, they didn’t have a great season.”
Virat Kohli surprised one and all when he came to open the innings after he came to open the innings with Devdutt Padikkal in the Eliminator against SRH on Friday. The experiment failed as Kohli departed after scoring just 6 runs. Gambhir has reckoned that Kohli should have opened the batting throughout the season if at all he wanted to bat in that position.
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Gautam Gambhir elaborated, “There was so much talk about Virat Kohli opening the batting, if you wanted to open the batting, you should have done that right from the start of the tournament. And then they should have had a squad, probably if Virat wanted to open, they should have picked a middle-order batter in the auction. But again it was all about Virat and AB [de Villiers].”
