Felt suffocated by a society that doesn't warm to forthrightness, says Gautam Gambhir

The left-hand batsman has definitely had his fair share of controversies.

The left-hander is currently playing his last first-class game for Delhi | PTI

Former India opener Gautam Gambhir says that he never really got along with the society in general for how it tends to invariably bemoan contrary opinions and fears being "shown the mirror" by anyone.

The 37-year-old has always been a strong value-based human being and has never for once avail signs of becoming a conformist, for which he even doesn't regret being plagued by an "unfulfilled career" and creating "a lot of enemies" because he could eventually "sleep peacefully at night."

“It’s not only about cricketing system, in general, our society doesn’t like to be shown the mirror. We like to maintain the status quo and not look at the reality. I get suffocated by all this,” Gambhir told PTI, having scored a brilliant hundred in his last first-class game for Delhi against Andhra.

The left-hand batsman, who stood for what he felt right even if that meant going against the will of powerful men across, further said, "I can’t tolerate wrong things and artificiality. A lot of people around me say that I could have been diplomatic but that is simply not me. Yes, I made many enemies but I slept in peace. It did affect me. I am human after all but then like I said, I could not have let the unfair (practices) prevail."

"Look, I am not being holier than thou but some of the things that go on in our system are absolutely ridiculous. I was vocal about them and I paid the price by having an unfulfilled career,” he added.

Gambhir also talked about the instant use of the word misconstrued in his context, where the exceptional man, reaffirmed, "(I was) Misunderstood a lot of times. For example, if I said, a captain is as good as his team, media and critics thought I was taking a dig at MS Dhoni."

"These critics would conveniently ignore when I repeated the statement when I was leading KKR or Delhi Ranji team. All these misunderstandings played a negative part in my career," he signed off.

 
 

By Kashish Chadha - 09 Dec, 2018

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