Former India cricketer Manoj Tiwary, who once shared the Kolkata Knight Riders dressing room with Gautam Gambhir, has openly urged the BCCI to remove Gambhir as the head coach of India’s Test team. The criticism has intensified ever since India suffered a crushing 408-run defeat against South Africa in the second Test at the Barsapara Cricket Stadium in Guwahati.
This loss not only marked India’s most significant defeat at home in recent years but also sealed their second Test series whitewash on home soil since Gambhir took charge. In India’s 93-year Test history, they have been whitewashed only three times at home—two of those coming during Gambhir’s tenure—a statistic that has raised several eyebrows.
Even though early reports suggest that the BCCI is unlikely to take any immediate decision on Gambhir’s future, Tiwary believes Indian cricket urgently needs a fresh approach in the red-ball format. Speaking to the Hindustan Times, the former India batter made his stance clear: “Absolutely. There is no question about it. It’s high time they take this decision to save Indian Test cricket. That’s the bottom line.”
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Tiwary, who represented India in 12 ODIs and three T20Is, added that the series defeat didn’t surprise him at all. According to him, the problems were visible long before India travelled to South Africa. He pointed out inconsistent selections, unclear planning, and excessive experimentation as the reasons behind India’s downfall.
“The writing was on the wall. I knew things were not going well. There was a lot of chopping and changing, whether in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, the home series against New Zealand, or now against South Africa,” he said.
Tiwary also questioned Gambhir’s claims of achieving a series draw in England with a young squad, stating that the outcome flattered India more than it reflected strategic brilliance. “The England series draw was not a great result. England lost that match because they played too many shots on the last day. They could have easily won the series 3-1,” he asserted.
The former Bengal captain further criticised Gambhir for taking credit for India’s Champions Trophy and Asia Cup wins, arguing that those squads were shaped much earlier under Rohit Sharma, Rahul Dravid, and even Virat Kohli. “Even if Gambhir wasn’t the coach, India would have won those tournaments. The team was already built,” he said.
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In a sharp conclusion, Tiwary stated that appointing a white-ball mentor as India’s overall head coach was a flawed decision. “If you don’t have experience at the ground level, how do you expect to deliver results at the highest level? It’s next to impossible,” he added, making his stance on Gambhir’s red-ball coaching role abundantly clear.
