Former cricketer Gautam Gambhir lashed out at coach Ravi Shastri for the latter’s remarks that the current Indian team was the best travelling side the country has had in the past 15-20 years.
Gambhir, who very recently announced his retirement from all formats of the game labelled these comments as “childish.” He also questioned Shastri’s own credentials, pointing out that the 56-year only has a World Championship in Australia and nothing else.
I’m sure that people who haven’t won anything give these kinds of statements. I don’t know what Shastri has achieved in his career apart from winning the World Championship in Australia. I don’t think he was a part of an overseas series win. If you haven’t won anything yourself, you end up giving this kind of statement. I’m sure people wouldn’t have taken this seriously. I’m sure he must not have seen enough cricket. If he had he seen enough cricket, he wouldn’t have given that statement,” said the southpaw, as quoted by CricketNext.
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“It was very childish. Even if you had won 4-1, you won’t say this is the best Indian team touring abroad. You would still stay humble and say we want to take this, we want to go forward, we want to keep improving. You wouldn’t say this is the best Indian team ever overseas. This is childish. I’m sure people wouldn’t have taken this seriously. I don’t know about other people but I didn’t take it seriously because it was a very immature statement,” he added, explaining his stance.
Shastri, during the tour of England earlier this year, had said,”The endeavour of this team is to travel well, compete and win. If you look at the last three years, we have won nine matches overseas and three series. I can’t see any other Indian team in the last 15-20 years that has had the same run in such a short time, and you have had some great players playing in those series.”
These comments didn’t go down too well with former legends like Sunil Gavaskar, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly.