Batting let the team down, not the captaincy of Gautam Gambhir opines Sanjay Manjrekar

Gautam Gambhir played an instrumental role in winning the IPL trophy twice for Kolkata Knight Riders. However, the left-hander has found it difficult doing the same when he took the role for his new franchise Delhi Daredevils. The side led by Gambhir could only register one win out of their 6 encounters and are currently sitting at the bottom of the table. Recently, Gambhir surprised everyone when he decided to quit the captaincy following the poor outing.

Sanjay Manjrekar – the former India batsman and commentator, however, feels that there wasn’t a flaw in Gambhir’s leadership skills. According to Manjrekar, it was the Daredevils‘ (DD) batting which let them down in the tournament. Manjrekar also suggested that Gambhir was picked by the DD management for his role as skipper more than as a batsman.

Gambhir’s leadership was not the issue: Manjrekar

While speaking to news agency PTI Manjrekar said that “I don’t think Gambhir’s leadership was a problem, it was just about the batsmen not getting runs, notable failure like (Glenn) Maxwell hurting them. Gambhir, the batsman, thereby had to get runs because the others were failing around him. Gambhir was picked more for his captaincy than his batting, but because the batting group was not clicking, Gambhir the batsman came under scrutiny.”

According to the Indian-based commentator, after their loss to the Kings XI Punjab, the change was rather imminent. He continued, “I don’t think the leadership was an issue but (they needed to) do something to reboot. You expected something like this after their last result and being at the bottom of the table. This was the time to change something,” said the IPL commentator.

The 52-year old also added that by merely changing the skipper of the side will not necessarily lead to a change in fortunes. He also felt that if the Daredevils need to win the matches, the batsman will have to perform better while also feeling that the side are very reliant on New Zealand pacer Trent Boult.

Despite this, the Daredevils, under their new leader – Shreyas Iyer were hugely impressive as they picked up a massive win in the Feroz Shah Kotla against Dinesh Karthik’s KKR.

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