‘He was the only captain who gave me sleepless nights. Didn’t need to make plans for anyone else’: Gambhir’s huge remark

Team India’s former opener Gautam Gambhir was an integral part of the side’s World Cup wins in T20s (2007) and ODIs (2011). While Gambhir largely played under the captaincy of Mahendra Singh Dhoni in Indian colours, the left-handed opener displayed brilliant captaincy abilities for his Indian Premier League franchise Kolkata Knight Riders, with whom he lifted two titles. Gambhir had led the KKR to IPL wins in 2012 and 2014; incidentally, these remain the only IPL titles in the Knight Riders’ history so far.

During his commentary stint with Star Sports during the second Test between India and Australia, Gambhir was asked about his stint at KKR, and was posed an interesting question by a fellow commentator. The former opener was asked to pick any two players that he would have wanted in his KKR squad at the time, who could have bolstered the squad.

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While Gambhir acknowledged that it was a “difficult” question, it didn’t take him much time to name his two picks.

“It’s a difficult question, but the answer is very simple. If I have to pick two players, I have an easy answer. My first player would be Rohit Sharma, and second would be Yuvraj Singh. I didn’t need any other player apart from these two. I’m not saying we would be having a perfect team, but we would’ve won more than two titles (if we had these two players.),” Gambhir said.

“Rohit and I would open, Robin Uthappa at 3, Suryakumar Yadav at 4, Yuvraj at 5, Yusuf Pathan at 6 and Andre Russell at 7. You can imagine what a team that would have been. We tried our best to get Yuvraj, but that couldn’t happen,” said the former batter further.

The former opener further mentioned that Rohit was the “only captain” who troubled him in the IPL.

“The only captain who gave me sleepless nights was Rohit Sharma. I didn’t need to make plans for anyone else, nor did I think much about others. Yuvraj, I think, is India’s greatest white-ball cricketer, not just because of his player of the series performance in the World Cup, but because of his vast talent and ability,” said Gambhir.