'It’s never easy to fill those shoes' - Dinesh Karthik backs Gautam Gambhir despite poor start to coaching stint

The Indian team has had a bit of a disappointing run with Gautam Gambhir taking the reins as the head coach. The team ended the season with two disappointing losses in the last two Test series against New Zealand and Australia, which had eliminated themselves from the World Test Championship (WTC) Final qualification.

There are already questions surrounding Gambhir’s tenure as a coach, looking at the recent performances of the team. While there is a lot of criticism, there are still some players who have backed the former two-time world champion despite his failures.

Meanwhile, former India wicketkeeper-batter Dinesh Karthik has come in support of the 43-year-old as he is trying to fill in the shoes of Rahul Dravid who has had a successful stint as coach and has still produced great results in the T20Is.

“I think, when it comes to Gautam Gambhir, you got to cut him some slack a little bit because I think he has come in at a very tough time. Post a successful regime of Rahul Dravid, it’s never easy to fill those shoes,” Karthik told Cricbuzz.

“He has found success, an immense success in T20 cricket, where he’s had a lot of young boys. He’s been able to have, I would dare say, a massive influence over them. But in Test cricket, he has had the going very hard. Yes, the Bangladesh series was a success and I think post that, things have just gone downhill for him,” the Chennai-born added.

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Is Gambhir happy with current set of players, questions Karthik

Karthik has also opened up on whether Gambhir was struggling with the set of players he had in red-ball cricket talking about his recent press conference on Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma where he had revealed that he wants them to make decisions for the future of the team and question whether he is happy with the squad.

“He wants them to take the decision as to what they feel is best, I think the biggest decision for him to make is, is he very, very happy with his current set of players? Is he able to influence them over decision-making? Are they aligned with his thought process? What is his ideology of how the Test team should look? And are these players fitting in? If that is the case, great. If not, then you have to obviously figure out what is the best way moving forward,” Karthik said.