Sunil Gavaskar: ‘None of the current India batters have approached me’

Former India batter Sunil Gavaskar has revealed that none of the current batters from the India setup has approached him advice and guidance recently.

Gavaskar added that with India having a head coach and batting coach in Rahul Dravid and Vikram Rathour respectively, he was a bit cautious as to not to confuse the players with “too much information”.

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Rohit Sharma-led Team India suffered a heavy defeat to Australia in the World Test Championship (WTC) final in June, and with a few fresh faces in the squad, India kickstart their tour of West Indies with the first Test in Dominica on Wednesday.

Gavaskar cited examples of Dravid, VVS Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar who had approached him for inputs during their playing days.

“No, no one has come. Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman regularly came to me. And they would approach me with a specific problem and you could tell them something which you had observed,” Gavaskar was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

The 74-year-old also recalled a conversation with Virender Sehwag, when the former opener was struggling for runs.

“I remember once calling Virender Sehwag out of the blue. He had not been scoring too many runs. I told him, ‘Viru, just try the off-stump guard’. So he asked, ‘Why, Sunny bhai?’ So I told him, ‘Look, you aren’t known for great footwork. What is happening is, sometimes when you are getting out, you are reaching out for the delivery and it makes things difficult for you. So, maybe if you take the off-stump guard, you straight away know that the ball is outside the off-stump’. That is where the coach can come in with his inputs,” recapped Gavaskar.

Gavaskar went onto question if the team management had helped rectify the batters’ mistakes.

“If the batters are making the same mistakes over and over again, you need to ask what has happened with your technique. How have you tried to improve the batter? Have you tried to tell him, maybe take a different guard. Don’t take a leg-stump guard, take a middle and off stump guard,” the former Mumbai cricketer added.

Both of India’s upcoming Tests against West Indies will be part of the new 2023-25 WTC cycle. The Tests will be followed by three ODIs and five T20Is.