Recently, former Indian cricketer and former national cricket team selector Sandeep Patil has revealed that he nicknamed Gautam Gambhir as the “Amitabh Bachchan of Indian cricket” and he was dropped from the national team due to his attitude problem.
The left-handed Indian opening batsman was one of the successful batsmen. Making his international cricketing debut in 2003, Gambhir has played 58 Tests, 147 ODIs and 37 T20Is where he has scored 4,154 runs (average 41.95), 5,238 runs (average 39.68) and 932 runs (average 27.41) respectively.
Gambhir was one of the important members of the Indian cricket team during their victories in 2007 ICC World T20 and 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup. In both finals of those successful tournaments, Gambhir was the highest scorer for the team.
Since late 2011, Gambhir was struggling with the bat. Slowly his place in the national squad came under danger and later he was excluded from the national squad as well as BCCI contract. Though he made a comeback in the Test squad in late 2016, played only two Tests and further, he has never made another comeback till the date.
Recently, Sandeep Patil revealed that he called Gambhir as the “Amitabh Bachchan of Indian cricket” for his angry young man attitude.
Patil wrote in The Quint, “It was due to his ‘angry young man’ attitude that I nicknamed him the Amitabh Bachchan of Indian cricket.”
Patil confidently claimed that Gambhir’s attitude was the reason for his success as well as his failure too.
The 61-year-old wrote, “I can easily say that it was because of his so-called attitude that he made it to the Indian team, but the very same so-called attitude was also the reason that he got dropped from the team.”
Patil also revealed that Gambhir decided to end the friendship with him after his omission from the Indian cricket team. Before that, they were very good friends but nowadays Gambhir seemed angry with him whenever they met.
