Gautam Gambhir, who has won two IPL titles as captain, has criticized Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Virat Kohli for not complying for 8 long years. Gambhir has added that he has nothing against Virat Kohli, but it was time the 32-year-old raised his hand and took responsibility for the team’s untitled streak in the Indian Premier League (IPL).
To validate his comments, the former India starter said that Kohli Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Mumbai Indians (MI) counterparts MS Dhoni and Rohit Sharma have long been captains of their teams due to their release. Gambhir claimed that the MI leadership would have removed Rohit Sharma from the captaincy for a failure of 8 long years.
“Eight years is a long, long time. Look what happened to R. Ashwin. Two years of captaincy [for the Kings XI Punjab], was unable to give birth and was removed. We talk about MS Dhoni, we talk about Rohit Sharma, we talk about Virat Kohli … not at all. Dhoni has won three [IPL] titles, Rohit Sharma has won four titles, and that is why they have been captains for so long because they have delivered. I’m sure if Rohit Sharma hadn’t been eight years old, they would have eliminated him too. There shouldn’t be different criteria for different people.
“The problem and the responsibility start from the top, not from the management or the support staff, but from the leader. You are the leader, you are the captain. When you get the credit, you also have to accept the criticism,” Gambhir told ESPNcricinfo.
RCB did not deserve to be in the play-offs
After RCB lost to Delhi Capitals but still qualified for the play-offs based on a better Net Running Rate (NRR) than Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), Virat Kohli had said that his team deserved to be in the next stage because of the good cricket he had played. Gautam Gambhir chose that comment to further criticize Kohli. He noted that RCB lost their last 5 games in a row, adding that they were lucky to win the Super Over tie against the Mumbai Indians.
“You can keep saying ‘we qualified for the playoffs and we deserved to qualify for the playoffs’, absolutely not. RCB never really deserved to qualify for the playoffs. If you look at the last four or five games, and even that Super Over against the Mumbai Indians , they were very lucky that Navdeep Saini did it brilliantly, otherwise they didn’t have a great season, from a hitting and bowling point of view.
“Eight years is a long time. It’s not that Kohli is inexperienced. He captains India, captains the team he plays for, but you have to deliver results, you have to deliver. Sport is about delivering.”
Gambhir has also questioned Kohli’s opening role in the tie.
Virat Kohli surprised everyone after he got to open the innings with Devdutt Padikkal in the Eliminator against SRH on Friday. The move was even more interesting, considering that Aaron Finch was also in the game XI. The experiment failed when Kohli walked away after scoring just 6 runs. Gambhir has calculated that Kohli should have opened the batting at all times, if he had wanted to hit in that position.
“There was a lot of talk about Virat Kohli opening batting, if you wanted to open batting, you should have done it from the beginning of the tournament. And then they should have had a squad, probably if Virat wanted to open, they should have picked a middle order hitter in the But again, it was all about Virat and AB [de Villiers],” he said.
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