‘Underrated’ Gautam Gambhir an underachiever, believes Dilip Vengsarkar

Averaging close to 58 after his first 28 Test matches, scoring nine centuries in the process, Gautam Gambhir was amongst the world’s best batsmen during the end of the 2000s and won the ‘ICC Test Player of the Year’ award in 2009, pipping AB de Villiers, Michael Clarke and Graeme Smith amongst others. However, after peaking in the 2009/10 season, Gambhir’s career encountered a dramatic fall that no one quite saw coming and flabbergastingly, the southpaw failed to score a single hundred in his last 30 Tests, averaging just over 28 in the aforementioned phase.

A bad run of form soon turned into a point of no return and by 2013, at just 31 years of age, Gambhir had become a complete outcast. Dilip Vengsarkar, who was the chairman of selectors of the Indian national side between 2006 to 2008 and oversaw the emergence of Gambhir in international cricket, branded the southpaw as an underrated cricketer with immense potential and added that the Delhite, for his talent, should have played way more games than what he did. Vengsarkar, however, admitted that Gambhir’s emotions got the better of him.

“Underrated player. Had a lot of talent but couldn’t control his anger and emotions. I feel that for the kind of ability he had, he should have played much more for India,” Vengsarkar told Times of India.

After making a brief comeback in 2014, Gambhir just played four more Tests for the country, with his last appearance coming against England in Rajkot in 2016. The southpaw, who top-scored for India in the finals of both the 2007 T20 World Cup and the 2011 Cricket World Cup, announced his retirement from all forms of cricket in December 2018, calling time on a 19-year career.