Former India opener Gautam Gambhir has lambasted Kolkata Knight Riders’ (KKR) decision to change their captain from Dinesh Karthik to Eoin Morgan midway into the IPL 2020 in UAE.

Read Also: Morgan expects "smooth transition" into leadership role after Karthik quits post 

Ahead of KKR’s match against Mumbai Indians on Friday (October 16), the franchise issued a media release, as per which, Karthik relinquished his post to focus on his batting.

However, Gambhir, who led KKR from 2011 to 2017, did not buy that logic.

“Cricket is not about relationships, it’s about performances and honestly, I don’t think Morgan can change a lot of things. He could’ve changed a lot of things had he captained from the start of the tournament. No one changes during the middle of the tournament. It’s nice to have a good relationship between the coach and the captain,” Gambhir said on Star Sports.

Morgan's KKR captaincy debut went horribly wrong as the team suffered a crushing 8-wicket defeat at the hands of MI in Abu Dhabi.

According to Gambhir, KKR shouldn’t have changed their captain as Karthik was doing a fine job.

Under Karthik’s leadership, KKR had won 4 out of their 7 matches this season and were at the top 4 in the eight-team points table.

“Li’ll surprised. He’s obviously leading KKR for the last 2 and a half years. You don’t do it in the middle of the season. KKR is not in that bad a position that someone needs to change a captain, so yeah little bit surprised.

"If KKR wanted to make this change, they should have done it at the start of the competition. If you are talking so much about a World Cup-winning captain being there in your team puts pressure on someone like Dinesh Karthik then why not just give it to Morgan straightaway, why put so much pressure on Karthik?

"My point is, it sounds very good when someone says that I want to concentrate on my batting but the truth is, you start getting fillers from the management whether they are happy or not, so it’s very unfortunate,” Gambhir said.