Team India head coach Gautam Gambhir's first message: Focus on all cricket formats

The newly-appointed head coach of the Indian cricket team, Gautam Gambhir, sent out his message to the squad, emphasizing that all three cricket formats must be played with a focus on injury and workload management.

Clarifying that players would need to do the right thing in the best interest of the team, Gambhir started off with a no-nonsense approach.

Taking to the microblogging site X, BCCI secretary Jay Shah welcomed Gambhir as the new head coach and the decision was welcomed well by the Indian cricket fraternity. 

Gautam Gambhir's first assignment as the head coach of Team India will be the tour to Sri Lanka. Team India will participate in 3 T20Is and 3 ODIs, from July 26. The bigger picture will be the ICC tournaments as Gambhir will coach the Indian side in 5 ICC events.

Gambhir felt that injuries are part of an athlete's life and a player should look to participate in all the three formats if he is fit to play.

In a video posted by Star Sports, Gambhir said, "Injuries are part of sportsmen's life. And if you are playing all the three formats, you ect injured, you go back and get recovered but you should be playing all the three formats. I am not a big believer to identify people that okay we are going to keep him for Test matches and we are going to keep him and we are going to manage his injury and workload and stuff."

"Look professional cricketers, you got a very small span. When you are playing for your country you want to play as much as you can. When you are in very good form, go ahead and play all the three formats," Gambhir explained.

Under Dravid's tenure, the former coach focused more on injury management.

"Cricket is not an individual sport," Gambhir reaffirmed his stance that the players need to focus on team's interest over individual interest.

Advocating honesty, he said, "Try and be as honest as you can to a profession. All the results will follow. When I picked up the bat, I never thought of results. I never thought that I'm going to. I want to score these many runs."

"It is a team sport where it is the team that comes first, you're probably the last one that comes in the entire line up," Gambhir added.