Gautam Gambhir said India had been rewarded for playing “high risk, high reward” cricket, and praised captain Suryakumar Yadav for leading their T20 World Cup title defence.
Gambhir, the coach, maintained his own record of never having lost a major final after watching his side demolish New Zealand in Sunday night’s final in Ahmedabad.
India have now lost just two of their past 33 matches in ICC competitions. They became the first side to successfully retain the T20 World Cup, they also hold the Champions Trophy, and were defeated finalists in the ODI World Cup.
“The most important thing in this T20 format was that we didn't want to be afraid of losing,” Gambhir said. “If you are afraid of losing, you never win.
“I always believe high risk, high reward is very important in this format, because many times it happens that you play in a conservative way.
“I would have been happier if we had been out for 110-120. But our target was always to make 250 runs. But we didn’t want to play the 160-180 runs cricket.
“I think for too long we played cricket with 160-170 runs. But for the past two years, it was the captain's ideology. The captain himself wanted to play high risk, high reward. I think the credit needs to go to the captain as well.”
Suryakumar’s own return with the bat in the competition was relatively meagre. After playing the innings which saved them from a potential shock defeat against the United States on the opening night in Mumbai, he did not reach 50 in the rest of the tournament.
And yet Gambhir pointed out that the captain’s lack of obsession with personal milestones is a key part of the success of the side.
“I think he's a phenomenal leader,” Gambhir said. “He very rightly mentioned that he doesn't want to be called a captain, he wants to be called a leader, because a leader is a far bigger figure, a father figure in a dressing room, than a captain.
“My simple philosophy with Surya has always been that milestones don't matter. It's the trophies that matter.
“For too long in Indian cricket, we've spoken about milestones. And I hope, till I'm there, we're not going to talk about milestones.
“You can see it in the last three games, what Sanju [Samson, who was named player of the tournament] did: 97 not out, 89, 88. Imagine if you would have been playing for a milestone, probably we wouldn't have got 250.
“The bigger purpose of a team sport is to be winning trophies, not scoring individual runs.”
India’s captain and coach have markedly different personalities. Gambhir is famously intense and serious, while Suryakumar turns most interactions into a comedy act, so jocular is he. But the captain said he and Gambhir work well together.
“Many times we have talked about the team, about the playing 11 or [squad of] 15, who we have to choose, and 14 players have always been the same,” Suryakumar said.
“If the success rate is this high, we don't need to discuss it so much. Because we were always on the same page, since we started working together.
“I don't remember any time we had an argument over a player. Whether we should play a particular player or not. We both were always interested in making the team win.
“How we can put a player in a position that can benefit the team? Our goal was to achieve something good together.”
