New Delhi: The great Sunil Gavaskar was among many who had high expectations for Rohit Sharma when he took over as India's captain last February, following a turbulent conclusion to Virat Kohli's tenure. Since then, India has performed poorly in a Test series in South Africa, lost the World Test Championship final, and failed to get to the T20 World Cup final in Australia.

Gavaskar has expressed dissatisfaction with Rohit's leadership following a string of defeats, and he has also called for greater accountability from the coaching team, which includes Rahul Dravid, Vikram Rathour, and Paras Mhambrey.

Gavaskar said, “I expected more from him (Rohit). In India it is different, but when you do well overseas that is really the test. That is where he has been a little disappointing. Even in the T20 format, with all the experience of the IPL, hundreds of matches as captain, with a mix of best IPL players not being able to get to the finals has been disappointing.”

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The former Indian captain also inquired as to whether the selectors and BCCI had conducted a thorough evaluation of India's losses. He spoke specifically to India's defeat by Australia in the World Test Championship, saying that coach Dravid and captain Rohit should have been questioned about their choices.

“They should be asking questions, ‘Why did you field first?’ Okay, it was explained at the toss that it was overcast and all. The question after that should be, ‘You didn’t know about Travis Head’s weakness against the short ball?’ Why was the bouncer employed only when he had scored 80 runs. You know, the moment Head came in to bat, in the commentary box, we had Ricky Ponting saying, ‘Bounce him, bounce him.’ Everyone knew about it but we didn’t try.”

After the WTC loss, Rohit Sharma spoke about the lack of preparation and how in an ideal world a team would need 20 days of preparation. Gavaskar did not buy that argument. “What kind of preparation are we talking about? Now they have gone to the West Indies. You have the example of the World Test Championship before you. Are you playing any matches? So what is this talk about 20-25 days? … When you talk about preparation, be genuine about it. Go 15 days before, play two warm-up matches. The main guys can rest, but the fringe players might be actually challenging those who are not doing well. He does not get an opportunity to show that he is good enough.”

Gavaskar puts the blame on the senior players’ reluctance as they are assured of their spots. “The truth is the main guys do not want to go early. Because they know that come what may, they will get selected. And when you go early they will talk about the workload. You call yourself the fittest team in the world or fitter than the early generations then how do you break down so soon? How do you have a workload issue when you play a 20-over game?”

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The first batter to surpass 10,000 Test runs also brought up the issue of coaches' responsibility. While bowling coach Mhambrey began his tenure under head coach Dravid, batting coach Rathour has carried on from the Virat Kohli-Ravi Shastri era.

“If the batters are making the same mistakes over and over again, you need to ask what has happened with your technique. How have you tried to improve the batter? Have you tried to tell him, maybe take a different guard. Don’t take a leg-stump guard, take a middle and off stump guard.”

“I remember once calling Virendra Sehwag out of the blue. He had not been scoring too many runs. I told him, ‘Viru, just try the off-stump guard’. So he asked, ‘Why, Sunny bhai?’ So I told him, ‘Look, you aren’t known for great footwork. What is happening is, sometimes when you are getting out, you are reaching out for the delivery and it makes things difficult for you. So, maybe if you take the off-stump guard, you straight away know that the ball is outside the off-stump’. That is where the coach can come in with his inputs.”

Ravichandran Ashwin recently stated in an interview that "teammates used to be friends, but now we are just colleagues." That, in Gavaskar's opinion, is the sentence that best captures the spirit of the team.

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“It’s a sad thing because you should be able to get together after play ends and maybe not talk about the game but talk about music, maybe talk about the films you like, maybe talk about your interest in space. But if that is not what is happening, that is disappointing. Having said that, the new thing that started 20 years back or longer is that every player gets a single room. That too can be a factor …”

As a commentator Gavaskar has been at the grounds for almost all games played by India, at home and abroad, available to the batsmen for any consultation on batting. Has anyone approached him in the past 5 to 10 years?

“No, no one has come. Rahul Dravid,Sachin Tendulkar,V V S Laxman regularly came to me. And they would approach me with a specific problem and you could tell them something which you had observed,” he said.

“I don’t have an ego about this, I could go and talk to them but since there are two coaches — Rahul Dravid and Vikram Rathore – so sometimes you hold back since you don’t want to confuse them with too much information.”

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