International cricket experience not everything required in a coach, feels Gautam Gambhir
Gautam Gambhir believes that coaching needs more than just international experience
|Getty
According to Gautam Gambhir, the experience of playing international cricket is not enough to be a good coach and there are other criteria to fulfil in this regard. The veteran Indian batsman, who retired from cricket in 2018, has represented India in 58 Tests, 147 ODIs, and 37 T20Is.Â
In his international career spanning over 14 years, Gautam Gambhir had amassed a total of over 10,000 across three formats. However, the veteran batsman believes that in order to become a successful coach, an individual needs to satisfy other criteria other than having international cricket.
The former opener revealed that he feels one of the primary roles of a coach, especially in the T20 format, should be to inspire a positive mindset among cricketers. According to Gambhir, the worst thing that a coach can do is altering one’s technique or teaching up a batsman to play a particular set of shots. A coach needs to inspire the batsman to play their natural cricket instead, according to the seasoned batsman.
“It’s not important that you have played a lot of cricket, for you to be a very successful coach – probably, that’s right for a selector, but not for a coach. Probably you can just have a different T20 batting coach, just for that particular format. It is really not true that someone who hasn’t played international cricket or who hasn’t played enough cricket, can’t become a successful coach,” Gambhir said on Star Sports’ Cricket Connected Show.
“What ultimately a coach does in a T20 format is frees your mindset and feeds your mindset and make you hit those goals and those big shots. No one teaches you how to hit a lap shot or a reverse lap shot, no coach can do that. If someone is trying to do that to a player, he is harming him more than actually making him a better player,” he added.
