‘Kadhwa hai magar sach hai’ – Fans react as Gautam Gambhir says India is obsessed with individuals after their loss against Australia in WTC final

Former Indian cricketer Gautam Gambhir took a shot at the Indian Cricket team management and the fans after a loss in the World Test Championship final against Australia. Gambhir said that the fans are only obsessed with the individual performances of the players and not the whole team, while teams like New Zealand, Australia and England always put their country first.

Notably, India suffered a big loss in their second consecutive WTC final as Australia defeated them by 209 runs at the Oval, England on Sunday, June 11th. Chasing a target of 444 runs on Day 5, India went on to lose regular wickets after Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane went back to the pavilion after an 86-run partnership. With this, India missed another chance to win an international trophy after 2013.

‘The stakeholders of the game have unfortunately been reduced to PR agencies’ – Gambhir

“Our country is not team obsessed, it’s individual obsessed. We count individuals bigger than our team, other countries like England, Australia, New Zealand, the team is bigger and not the individual. And the stakeholders of Indian cricket, from broadcasters to media, have unfortunately been reduced to PR agencies. They’ll show just 3 people the whole day. If you have made a 50 and i have also made a 50, if you keep showing one person, everyone will think that he is the only star. The other person will be termed underrated,” Gambhir told News18

“Who makes a player underrated? The broadcasters do, the experts do and social media does. If you talk about just one player’s performance, the other will be automatically underrated. Both have grafted equally but if one’s performance does not get credited, he/she will always remain underrated. This obsession with individuals is the reason why India have not won any major international trophy for a long time,” he further added

Speaking further, Gambhir also said how the media only shows a picture of Kapil Dev with the 1983 World Cup and not Mohinder Amarnath, who was the player of the match in the final against West Indies. Notably, India clinched their first World Cup in 1983 in the captaincy of Kapil Dev by defeating West Indies in the final at Lords.