Gautam Gambhir credits Australian batting legend for turnaround

Oct 20, 2016 at 12:35 PM

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Gautam Gambhir credits Australian batting legend for turnaround

When a cricketer plays at the highest level of the game for almost about a decade, scores heavily all around the world and suddenly he discovers a fault in his technique, one can understand his mental situation. The same happened with Indian opener Gautam Gambhir. The southpaw was one of the lynchpins of the Indian team a few years ago. He was scoring heavily in all formats but a string of poor performances saw him getting dropped from the team in 2014. More than the lack of scoring runs, his struggle to control his game made the matters worse for him.

However, he did not lose hope and kept on working hard and finally made a comeback to the Indian Test team after a two-year hiatus. The last year saw him scoring heavily in the domestic circuit, IPL and he finally got  a call after a good show in this year’s Duleep Trophy.

In an interview with the Indian Express, the man himself has revealed the reason behind the turnaround. Gambhir said that despite scoring runs, he was not in control of his game and revealed that Australian legend Justin Langer came to his rescue.

“Even before the England tour(2014 series after which he was dropped), when I was scoring runs, I did not look completely in control of my game. That’s when I met Langer at the Champions League in Hyderabad, some seasons ago.”

The KKR star also added, “Obviously, he made a lot of sense to me, and with time I realized he was the person whom I could trust. I went to Perth and spent time with him. His inputs were more mental than technical.”

Gambhir added that he met Langer’s batting coach Neil “Noddy” Holder during that time, who insisted the Indian opener to opt for a more open-chested batting stance.

Gambhir said: “If Justin helped me in the mental aspect of the game, Noddy helped me on the technical side. He is the best batting coach I have worked with. He was the guy who asked me to open my stance.”

Talking about his new stance, he said:“What your eyes can’t see, your hands can’t hit. These were the words of Ali, and it’s applicable in batting as well. Both Justin and I have been discussing it a lot when I was in Australia. If you cannot watch something clearly, your hands will never react.”

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