When Gautam Gambhir turned 'banker' for Team India

Former India cricketer Gautam Gambhir opened about the infamous Kamran Akmal incident during the Asia Cup game in 2010. India were cruising in their 268-run chase.

On one rare occasion, Gambhir missed a delivery from Pakistan spinner Saeed Ajmal. Wicketkeeper Kamran went up immediately claiming a caught behind only for the umpire to turn it down. Not amused by Kamran’s sportsmanship spirit, Gambhir walked straight up to Akmal during the drinks break and confronted him about the appeal.

“It happened in the heat of the moment. When India and Pakistan play each other then obviously it is a tense game. Good or a bad thing you can say but whatever arguments happened between us was during the drinks break. Instead of showing advertisements during the break Neo channel opted to show our heated arguments,” Gambhir said during a chat show hosted by cricket comedian Vikram Sathaye.

When asked the main reason behind the argument he replied, “I had tried to play and missed it fully. He appealed in such a way that he thought that the ball hit the bat. Then I told him that there is no point in appealing because nothing like that happened, we just got into a heated argument and then it just got from bad to worse.”

Gambhir also has an interesting tale of ducks. During season 7 of the IPL, the Kolkata Knight Riders skipper completed a hat-trick of ducks and was trolled heavily on social media.

“Obviously it would be a nightmare for any batsman specially being the captain of the side and scoring one run in four games is very tough,” he said.

But the performance of the team and Gambhir got better once the tournament returned back to India. The southpaw registered five fifties in a row and his team ended up winning the tournament.

Surely, something special had happened at that time.

“One special thing happened at that time is my daughter Aazeen was born. As soon as we came back from UAE I straight went to the hospital. The next morning I had a flight at 9’o clock to Ranchi. I could had missed that match if I missed that flight but I went and scored consecutive half-centuries in each match to win the tournament for my daughter,” Gambhir quipped.

Gambhir also revealed an interesting anecdote where former India coach and South African cricketer Gary Kirsten used to call him a banker.

“Gary used to call me a banker because he thought we both had some similarities between each other. He used to say me that my role in the Indian team is as similar as the role he had played for South Africa. He used to say that my job was to accumulate as many runs I can do for the team.”

Gambhir even considered dropping himself from the team due to his poor form but Kirsten asked him to carry on for one more match.

“I played the next match where I scored 50 odd runs and then I played the third test match in which I scored some about 70 runs. After that I was made captain for five one-day series against New Zealand and I scored two centuries in a series and ended up winning Man of the Series award. After that we went to South Africa and I scored four half-centuries in two test match series and looking at my form I was included in World Cup squad. If Gary opted to drop me from next match I would never had played World Cup,’’ Gambhir concluded.

(THIS STORY ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN THE DECCAN CHRONICLE AS MAY THE CASE BE)