Gautam Gambhir continues to be in the spotlight, regardless of whether it is in a good way or not. India's head coach has been copping heavy criticism for his approach to Test cricket. Since Gambhir took over as India's head coach, India lost their first-ever home Test series in 12 years, that too through a whitewash.
While that result came as an obvious shock, given India's dominance at home, the whitewash loss to South Africa in November came as a bigger jolt. There was some respite for Gambhir previously, due to the hard-fought 2-2 draw in England with a largely transitional Test side. That series managed to paper over the cracks that were visible after the New Zealand series and the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
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Recently, there were speculations that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had started to tentatively look for replacing Gambhir in the Test format. Reports suggested that VVS Laxman was considered and approached informally by the veteran had politely turned down the offer, citing that he was totally happy with his current role as Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA).
However, it seems now that these reports were fake. BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia has explained that there was no thought from the Board to replace Gambhir and also rubbished the theories about looking for potential replacements.
"There was no discussion about Gautam's test coaching to be replaced : such things are nothing but rumours," said Saikia in a chat with AajTak.