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Former Australian cricketer Jason Gillespie declined a suggestion to coach the Indian Test team as they face struggles in the longest format of the game after a whitewash Test series loss at home to New Zealand and South Africa in back-to-back years.
Jason, who also served as Pakistan's head coach in 2024 from April to December, was interacting with his followers on X handle. One of the users posted to Gilliespie, "Jason, you need to coach india now because they are losing not just losing but getting white washed at home twice they need you seriously." To this, Gillespie replied, "No thanks." While Team India has been doing exceptionally well under Gautam Gambhir in limited-overs cricket, lifting the ICC Champions Trophy and Asia Cup T20I edition in unbeaten runs, the same cannot be said about Test cricket as under him, India has won just seven Tests and lost 10, drawing the other two. As far as the series record is concerned, India started off well with a 2-0 series win against Bangladesh at home, but back-to-back setbacks against New Zealand and Australia (1-3 Border-Gavaskar Trophy loss away from home) led to legends Rohit, Virat, and Ravichandran Ashwin hanging up their whites. The 2-2 draw against England away from home, in one of the most gripping Test series over the years under leadership of a young Shubman Gill, followed by a 2-0 series win at home against West Indies did instill hope, before Proteas skipper Temba Bavuma, spinner Simon Harmer and pace all-rounder Marco Jansen chipped in with some of the best performances of the year to first deny India a chase of merely 124 runs at Kolkata and then inflict on them their biggest-ever Test loss by 408 runs. In both the Tests, India missed the services of skipper Gill, who went down due to a neck injury sustained just minutes into his batting stint at the Kolkata Test, with Rishabh Pant stepping in as captain. But India did well enough to secure well-fought ODI and T20I series against Proteas by margins of 2-1 and 3-1 respectively, to make the home series a decent affair overall. Now, India's most significant challenge ahead is not Test cricket for a while, but defending their T20 World Cup crown, won under Rohit Sharma's captaincy last year, with a new-look team led by Suryakumar Yadav in the tournament starting on February 7. India will start off their campaign against the USA on the same day in Mumbai and have been placed alongside Pakistan, Namibia, the Netherlands and the USA in Group A. While the young Indian team has displayed a golden standard of T20I cricket for the most part this year in their unbeaten run across all the series, playing their first T20 World Cup in the absence of stalwarts Rohit and Virat for the first time in several years in front of a home crowd would be an interesting challenge. (ANI)
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