International cricket experience not everything required in a coach, feels Gautam Gambhir

In his international career spanning over 14 years, Gautam Gambhir had amassed a total of over 10,000 across three formats. However, the veteran batsman believes that in order to become a successful coach, an individual needs to satisfy other criteria other than having international cricket.

The former opener revealed that he feels one of the primary roles of a coach, especially in the T20 format, should be to inspire a positive mindset among cricketers. According to Gambhir, the worst thing that a coach can do is altering one’s technique or teaching up a batsman to play a particular set of shots. A coach needs to inspire the batsman to play their natural cricket instead, according to the seasoned batsman.

“It’s not important that you have played a lot of cricket, for you to be a very successful coach – probably, that’s right for a selector, but not for a coach. Probably you can just have a different T20 batting coach, just for that particular format. It is really not true that someone who hasn’t played international cricket or who hasn’t played enough cricket, can’t become a successful coach,” Gambhir said on Star Sports’ Cricket Connected Show.

“What ultimately a coach does in a T20 format is frees your mindset and feeds your mindset and make you hit those goals and those big shots. No one teaches you how to hit a lap shot or a reverse lap shot, no coach can do that. If someone is trying to do that to a player, he is harming him more than actually making him a better player,” he added.