Don’t think that teams want close finishes: Gautam Gambhir

Gautam Gambhir, the skipper of the Kolkata Knight Riders knows the exactly what it feels to have a match stolen away from him in the dying seconds. What’s more is that Gambhir is a player who lets everyone know when he is disappointed. However, speaking about losing finishes and entertainment for the crowd, Gambhir stated that they had indeed learnt a lot from their previous experiences as a team.

“We’ve learnt from last year,” he said on Saturday (May 7), on the eve of the team’s clash against Gujarat Lions. “In the last edition, everyone thought that we’ll get through and ultimately we were the only side that couldn’t qualify. We couldn’t win one game out of the last two. We want to play as a professional side and play as a champion unit as well. Take every game as it comes, try and qualify for the playoffs and then see where we finish.

“Tomorrow is an important game, if we can win the game tomorrow, then it increases the gap as well. We’ll also have one game in hand. We’ve learnt a lot from the last year and hopefully, we don’t make the same mistakes that we did last year.”

I don’t think that the team achieves anything from a close finish and I don’t think that the teams want a close finish,” Gambhir said. “There’s far more stress. The closer the game gets, people need to handle the nerves better as well.

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The 34-year old southpaw also added that any side contesting in a match would like to win on a convincing note as opposed to the close finish.

“As a player, you want to win the game convincingly because that’s how you start dominating the tournament as well. When there’s a close finish you start saying we should have bowled well or we should have got those extra 15-20 runs more. What teaches you is if we can start winning consistently and start dominating other teams as well.”

“Sunil bowled really well in Bangalore. We all knew it was a difficult ground for a spinner to a bowl and the way he handled himself was brilliant. Ten runs per over on that ground, on that wicket, is pretty good and pretty par,” he said.