2 April, 2011: Under the floodlights and the rumbling crowd of the Wankhede Stadium, wearing a muddied blue jersey with captain cool at the non-striker's end, wielding the bat like a sword, the ‘Dark Knight of Indian cricket’ stood guard. In a moment of madness he charges forward to slog Sri Lanka's Thisara Perera. The ball passes through his guard crashing into the stumps; just 3 runs short of what would have been a glorious century after steadying India's ship on the the way to victory. What followed was a last ball six by Dhoni and once again Gautam Gambhir was pushed into the footnotes of Indian cricket.
He served Indian cricket under the shadows of Team India stalwart and his Delhi teammate, the flamboyant Virender Sehwag. Always charging forward down the pitch with his graceful footwork and exquisite timing to carve out knocks which led India to it's greatest glories. The 2007 T20 World Cup, 2007 CB series in Australia, 2009 New Zealand tour, 2011 World Cup would have never been possible without Gambhir's heroics. However, he never received his due from crickets pundits, always outshone by his peers.
Never once to mince his words or action, Gambhir's poker face, however, betrayed his raw aggression. His famous 'run-ins' with Shahif Afridi, Shane Watson, Kamran Akmal and Virat Kohli make for an entertaining YouTube session if you can 'lip-read' well. His Twitter bio reads 'Father, cricketer, Patriot' . True to his form, sparring with political bigwigs like Omar Abdullah, his pro-army tweets are fables of the internet folklore. Maybe after his retirement we can expect a more active role to serve his country.
Indian cricket will surely miss 'the hero we needed but didn't deserve.'
(A mechanical engineer by Profession, a philonoist with an opinion on everything under the sun. Writes on politics, sports and everything in between. This is a personal blog and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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