File photo of Gautam Gambhir and MS Dhoni© Twitter
One of the finest Indian cricketers of his generation, Gautam Gambhir is the man who was at the center of India’s triumphs as the 2007 ICC World T20 and the 2011 World Cup finals. Gambhi’s contributions were crucial to India’s success in the two marquee events. But, there are those who feel his performances, especially in the 2011 World Cup, aren’t given the credit they deserve. In an interview, Gambhir said that he has no qualms over his own contributions being ignored as the objective was India winning the World Cup, which the team accomplished.
In a chat on RevSportz, Gambhir named some of the other heroes of Inda’s 2011 World Cup triumph who should’ve gotten more credit than they deserve. The list included the likes of Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh, Sachin Tendulkar, etc.
“Do we celebrate Yuvraj Singh enough for what he did in the 2011 World Cup with all the health concerns he had? Do we celebrate Zaheer Khan’s opening spell enough? To start off a World Cup final with four maiden overs is incredible, and yet he isn’t given enough credit. Do we celebrate Sachin Tendulkar’s efforts enough? Yes, we celebrate him and the win, but how many remember he was the highest scorer in the World Cup with two hundreds to his name? Do we celebrate Harbhajan Singh’s spell against Pakistan in Mohali, or Suresh Raina‘s innings against Australia in Ahmedabad and Pakistan in Mohali? Both these innings were match-winning efforts,” he said in the chat.
Gambhir once again reiterated that Dhoni’s innings wasn’t alone responsible for India’s triumph in the World Cup. The cricketer-turned-politician even blamed social media for this perception, saying it is ‘biased’ on such subjects.
“While we celebrate MS Dhoni‘s innings in the final, we should celebrate these other efforts as much. No one innings could win India the trophy. It was a collective effort, and should be celebrated as such. It is because of social media that we don’t do it. Social media is biased and we all know that. But social media doesn’t make it the truth. There is always a tendency on social media to celebrate individuals more than the team. In doing so, what happens is we don’t celebrate key performers who had as much a part to play. And that’s an issue for sure. All I will say is we should celebrate the entire team. While we celebrate Dhoni, we should also celebrate the others who all played very important roles in the Indian win,” he explained.
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