Will Gautam Gambhir Able to Translate his Inner Strength?

By: Sandipan Bose

Scoring big runs means nothing if your team loses. The Kolkata Knight Riders’ captain, Gautam Gambhir, would know. It feels horrible, discharged, dispensing, disintegrating so on and so forth. Sachin Tendulkar must have felt like this on so many occasions when India lost matches despite his big centuries.

Gambhir must have felt shattered particularly because his big scores generally don’t happen for a losing cause. He is the kind of player who has scored runs in big matches.

Be it in the inaugural World T20 final match against Pakistan or the final of the 2011 World Cup final against Sri Lanka in Mumbai Wankhede stadium, Gambhir has always displayed his best on big days.

At the Eden Gardens, in Kolkata, on Wednesday, Gambhir did make 64 runs off 52 deliveries, but his strike-rate wasn’t good enough to help his team to cross the 200-run mark. This resulted in his team losing the match by a six wicket margin.

KKR was also deprived of another brilliant batting show from Mumbai’s Rohit Sharma. What happened to the Mumbai opener during the World T20 at home?

It is really tough to understand how someone so elegant could miss out on making runs in front of the home crowd during the world extravaganza.

KKR losing despite Gambhir’s good run isn’t good news. It’s certainly too early to talk about the KKR captain losing his winning touch because they have played only two matches in this IPL season.

Yes, it may not be possible for the Delhi southpaw to become the Gambhir of old, but he can surely bring in a bit more aggression in his batting to enhance his team performance.

Remember, this game could be ruthless to anyone and Gambhir isn’t an exception. A star, who can do no wrong, can also become a liability for his team one fine day if his contributions aren’t translated into wins. That is how it happens and has happened in the past. It may also indicate how a star is fading gradually.

Fortunately, Gambhir still has some cricket left in him and it’s his grit that distinguishes his batting. He may struggle against a quality attack on certain days, but if you take the grit out of his batting, he really is nothing.

He knows that as well and so it will be interesting to see how he translates his inner strength into something meaningful in KKR’s future matches.