Former Indian opener Gautam Gambhir has lashed out at the Indian head coach Ravi Shastri for his comments about the current team being the best Indian team overseas in the last 15 years. Talking to CricketNext, Gambhir, who recently announced his retirement from all forms of cricket, took a dig at Shastri by pinpointing the success, or the lack of it, as a player and called his statement childish and immature.
Gambhir said, “I’m sure that people who haven’t won anything give these kinds of statements. I don’t know what Shastri has achieved in his career apart from winning the World Championship in Australia. I don’t think he was a part of an overseas series win. If you haven’t won anything yourself, you end up giving this kind of statement. I’m sure he must not have seen enough cricket. If he had he seen enough cricket, he wouldn’t have given that statement.”
Gautam felt that whatever Shastri said was childish and even if the Indian team had won the series against England 4-1, there was no need to say that the current team is the best Indian team touring abroad.
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The southpaw further explained, “You would still stay humble and say we want to take this, we want to go forward, we want to keep improving. You wouldn’t say this is the best Indian team ever overseas. This is childish. I don’t know about other people but I didn’t take it seriously because it was a very immature statement.”
During India’s tour of England earlier this year, the Indian head coach went overboard in praising the team by saying, “the endeavor of this team is to travel well, compete and win. If you look at the last three years, we have won nine matches overseas and three series. I can’t see any other Indian team in the last 15-20 years that have had the same run in such a short time, and you have had some great players playing in those series.”
Shastri’s statements did go well with a few former Indian cricketers including Sunil Gavaskar and Sourav Ganguly as they criticized the Indian coach for his comments.
