NEW DELHI: Kolkata Knight Riders mentor
Gautam Gambhir
recently made waves by disparaging
AB de Villiers
and
Kevin Pietersen
. In response, former cricketer
Atul Wassan
suggested that the 42-year-old Gambhir possesses significant talent but should consider moderating his tone.
The controversy began when De Villiers and Pietersen criticized Hardik Pandya, the captain of Mumbai Indians, for his subpar performance in the
IPL 2024
.
Gambhir retaliated in an interview, stating, "De Villiers and Pietersen's records as captain are also not impressive."
Speaking to ANI, Wassan said Gambhir is a great player and achieved many things in his cricketing career.
Wassan revealed that the KKR mentor believed that facing adversity and challenges would push him to perform at his peak. This approach seemed to yield positive results for the southpaw as well.
"Gautam Gambhir is my junior and he is a great player and achieved many things in his career. When Gambhir used to play, he used to feel that such conflicts, would bring the best out of him and it worked for him. Gambhir used to do much better when he used to fight with someone. If he could just tone down a bit then he's got a lot of talent. He can work well and he is a great mentor but this conflict thing becomes the team's dogma attitude he is with," Wassan said.
The 56-year-old further expressed his disfavor towards the prevailing notion where the captain receives all the praise when a team succeeds, yet shoulders criticism when the team falters.
"I am also a not big fan of putting all the accolades to the captain and all the failures on the captain's head. So, it's his point of view whether he liked the captaincy of Ab de Villiers or not. You can say Sachin was not a good captain and he will agree with this. Criticizing the ex-player captaincy just to replicate another captain who is not doing well is not right then you're just using past players as a benchmark and giving a perspective against the new captain," he added.
The Mumbai-based franchise stands at the bottom of the IPL 2024 standings with eight points. Hardik Pandya's side displayed a sloppy performance in the 17th season of the tournament and won just four games after playing 13 matches. MI was also the first franchise in IPL 2024 to get knocked out of the playoffs.
"I don't think he has achieved anything from a team's point of view, Hardik Pandya is still an IPL-winning captain. So you should only compare oranges to oranges. Not apple to oranges," Gambhir added in his interview with a media outlet.
Under Gambhir's mentorship, KKR won 9 of 13 matches, and stand at the top of the IPL 2024 standings with 19 points and have a net run rate of +1.428. The Kolkata-based franchise only lost three matches in the 17th season which came against Chennai Super Kings (CSK), Rajasthan Royals (RR), and Punjab Kings (PBKS).
In their upcoming match, KKR will take on Rajasthan Royals on Sunday at the Assam Cricket Association Stadium in Guwahati.
(With ANI inputs)
English (US) ·