Why Gautam Gambhir was dropped?
Ever since his comeback to Test Cricket, Gautam Gambhir has been plundering runs against all types of attacks bothat home and abroad. The strength of the opposition or the conditions have not bothered Gambir. Gautam Gambhir's Test average after 28 Test Matches is a unbelievable 57.27 an average not achievedmy many. It might be argued that the average is bound to dip as the career gets longer but then too many batsmen in the world have averaged averaged 57.27 at any point of their career apart from the likes of Adam Gilchrist, Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Rahul Dravid who averaged 60 or close to that figure at the peak of their career.
By scoring a century against Bangladesh in the First Test at Chittagong played during 17thto 21st January 2010 which has his fifth in successive Test Matches, Gautam Gambhir is just another century away from yet another milestone of that of Don Bradmans world record of six hundreds in consecutive Tests and even if Gautam Gambhir fails to achieve the world record, still his effort is praiseworthy because the feat of five consecutive Test Centuries in consecutive tests has been achieved only by a select few since the inception of Test Cricket. The best thing about Gautam Gambhir is that he is a very flexible batsmen because while he has this natural ability to plunder runs at almost the same pace at which Sehwags gets his runs, Gambhir can be a blocker and bat for hours cutting down risks if the situation demands. In one way Gambhir is in the mould of Sachin Tendulkar, a harmonious blend of Sehwag and Rahul Dravid.
While the entire cricketing world is lavish in its praise of Gautam Gambhir, there are some questions which need to be answered and the biggest one is why Gambhir was dropped in the first place. Gambhir was dropped in December 2005 and got to play a solitary Test in Dec 2007 and became a regular in the team only in July 2008 which means he was not considered for more than 2 years by the selectors and the strangest part is Gambhir was dropped at a time when he was doing reasonably well in his career averaging close to 40 and that in the early part of his career and common logic said he should have been persisted with for showing promise. Gautam Gambhir's replacement in the team Akash Chopra was a mediocre player and yet was persisted with. Surprisingly Virender Sehwag Gambhir's current opening partner had expressed openly his preference for Akash Chopra and the team management and then skipper Sourav Ganguly too was in awe of Chopra stating that he was an excellent fielder. According to Virender Sehwag Akash Chopra blocking one end up gave Sehwag the confidence to go after the bowlers which helped India cause but the dark reality is Akash Chopra was a mediocre batsmen who averaged 23 in the 10 Tests he played at a very poor strike rate of 34.60 per 100 deliveries.
Once Akash Chopra was dropped selectors erred again and instead of recalling Gautam Gambhir offered Wasim Jaffer yet another chance and Jaffer too was yet another mediocre player like Akash Chopra who averaged a mere 34.10 in 31 Tests he played. Virender Sehwag who was partly responsible in delaying Gautam Gambhirs comeback by expressing his preference for Akash Chopra too paid the price later in his career when he was dropped and replaced by Wasim Jaffer. Sehwag too was dropped purely for non cricketing reasons as he averaged closed to 50 when he was dropped and Sehwag too like Gambhir embarrassed the selectors by plundering runs after his comeback.
Let us hope that the wishes of millions of cricket lovers in India will help Gautam Gambhir in his pursuit of Don Bradmans world record of six hundred in six consecutive test matches.
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