India batting legend Sunil Gavaskar said that while the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, and VVS Laxman, some of the greatest batters India has produced, came to him for advice regularly, the current and younger generation isn’t so interested in taking a few tips and learning from his experience.
Gavaskar, who has always been friendly and willing to help, has noticed technical issues in the top order but finds it odd that neither the seniors nor the younger players have sought out his aid in any way.
Gavaskar strongly believes that despite the technique lapses when batting abroad, the team management has not been able to make up for those mistakes, citing the excellent Virender Sehwag as an example.
"If the batters are making the same mistakes over and over again, you need to ask what has happened with your technique. How have you tried to improve the batter? Have you tried to tell him, maybe take a different guard? Don't take a leg-stump guard, take a middle and off-stump guard," Gavaskar told The Indian Express.
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“I remember once calling Virender Sehwag out of the blue. He had not been scoring too many runs. I told him, 'Viru, just try the off-stump guard'. So he asked, 'Why, Sunny bhai?' So I told him, 'Look, you aren't known for great footwork. What is happening is, sometimes when you are getting out, you are reaching out for the delivery and it makes things difficult for you. So, maybe if you take the off-stump guard, you straight away know that the ball is outside the off-stump. That is where the coach can come in with his inputs,” he added.
Indian team has recently failed to do well in the ICC tournament and recently lost the WTC 2023 final against Australia at the Oval by 209 runs. The batting crumbled under pressure as India were bowled out for 296 in the first innings and 234 in the second – the last seven wickets going down for 55 runs in another batting collapse.
The poor batting is caused by a lack of effort and a few technique flaws, which makes the Indian batter's reluctance to approach Gavaskar for guidance all the more puzzling.
In November 2021, Mayank Agarwal was the last Indian batter to seek Gavaskar's advice on various strategies.
"No, no one has come. Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, and VVS Laxman regularly came to me. And they would approach me with a specific problem and you could tell them something which you had observed. I don't have an ego about this, I could go and talk to them but since there are two coaches — Rahul Dravid and Vikram Rathore – so sometimes you hold back since you don’t want to confuse them with too much information," added the former India captain.
