Gambhir Does Not Worry About Being Liked : Faf Du Plessis

Kolkata Knight Riders finished in the second half of the points table in the last TATA IPL season, and new Head Coach Abhishek Nayar will have his work cut out. Speaking on JioStar’s ‘IPL Today Live’, JioStar experts Faf du Plessis and Aakash Chopra shared their thoughts on the absence of Gautam Gambhir in the KKR dressing room, the role of leadership beyond just the Captain, and the challenges for Nayar in his first season as Head Coach.

Speaking on JioStar’s ‘IPL Today Live’, JioStar expert Faf du Plessis shared his impression of Gautam Gambhir as a leader, having played against him many times:

“My perspective of Gambhir is obviously very different from the guys who play with him. He’s always the villain in the story when it comes to playing against him, but you respect that. And I think that’s the key thing with Gautam Gambhir, he’s so competitive. He does not worry for one second about being liked by anyone. His job as a leader is to set high standards and have accountability within the dressing room. So, from the outside, as a fellow leader playing against him, you want to beat him because of the way he carries himself as the opposition, but you respect the fact that he sets such high standards. That’s what good leaders do, and he’s created that since the day he started playing. If you look at his record, you have to take your hat off and say, from a leadership perspective, KKR with him was a stronger team.”

On why the Captain isn’t the be-all and end-all of leadership in a franchise:

_“People always think of the Captain when they look at leadership within an organisation or team. Yes, the Captain plays a role, but for me, it runs down from the top. So, it's your owners, Coach, and the leadership group within the team. When you look at successful teams like MI, CSK, and KKR, there’s a Gautam with a Shreyas Iyer, or a Dhoni with a Fleming. Even last year with RCB, you had really strong leadership at the top with Andy Flower and Mo Bobat, but with a very inexperienced Captain, for whom it was the first time captaining in the IPL. If you have a strong Captain, then a lot falls on him because he drives the team. But if you don’t have a strong captain, that’s when a strong Coach steps in. And I suppose that’s where Gambhir was so effective.”

Speaking on JioStar’s ‘IPL Today Live’, JioStar expert Aakash Chopra weighed in on lack of a strong leader in KKR’s setup currently since Gautam Gambhir’s departure:

“It’s about the collection of players and the leader you pick, but more importantly, having continuity. It can’t just be one season here and there, because that doesn’t allow an identity to be built. You need clarity on who you’re building the team around and a clear philosophy. With KKR, they’ve shown they value a core group and go the extra yard to retain a similar core, the couple of West Indians are a good example of that investment. But they’ve lacked a consistent leader. When Gautam was there, he had a free hand to build the team and play the brand of cricket he believed in. Even as a mentor, he wanted that same freedom, in terms of the pitches they played on and the kind of team he wanted. But he knew what he was doing and committed completely to it. The issue is, in his absence, there hasn’t been that continuity. They won with Shreyas Iyer and then let him go. Now they’re back to figuring out who the next Captain should be.”

On challenges that lie ahead for Abhishek Nayar in his first season as Head Coach:

“This is Abhishek Nayar’s first big assignment. He has worked with a WPL team, a very different sort of assignment where he had to build the team from scratch, and it wasn’t a great season. But the IPL is a different beast altogether. He’s worked in the past as an Assistant Coach and a Batting Coach, but now takes over as Head Coach of a franchise as big and as successful as KKR, with a Captain who is not commanding the same amount of respect, at least from the outside. Ajinkya wasn’t the original captaincy choice. If he was, he wouldn’t have been picked in an accelerated auction. So, he was given the captaincy because they couldn’t find anybody else, and now they can’t really move away. They’ll have to be tactically smart to repeat past success, especially with a bowling attack that looks weak.”