We’ll need special effort to beat England: Gautam Gambhir

KOLKATA: In the World Cup, it always gets tougher with every passing stage and now that India are in the knockouts, the difficulty quotient has gone up a notch higher.

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England, their opponents in the second semifinal in Mumbai on Thursday, flew a bit under the radar during the early games but India head coach Gautam Gambhir insisted his team will have to be at its best to beat them on Thursday.




“They’re a world-class team,” Gambhir said. “They’ve got a lot of quality players and Wankhede is a tough venue. Hopefully we can turn up and get another opportunity to do something special. Hopefully, we’ll play our best game and keep ticking all the boxes. We’ll need a special effort to beat a quality side like them.

“I don’t believe in all this ‘peaking-at-the-right-time’ thing,” Gambhir said. “You’ve got to win every game when you represent your country, as simple as it can get. It’s a short tournament, so you’ve got to try and play your ‘A’ game every time and it’s a format where you can’t take any opposition for granted.”

The current-day strategy involves a lot of data analysing and poring over videos, but for Gambhir, instincts still hold away above everything else. “I’ve never seen the data,” he said. “I don’t even know what data is all about. I absolutely do not believe in it, because I feel it’s more about instinct. T20 cricket is about instinct and backing your instinct. Whatever knowledge I have about the game and T20 format, I try and probably give it to the captain, try and help him out as much as I can.”

Batting coach Sitanshu Kotak echoed Gambhir in saying that facing England won’t be easy. “We have to turn up and execute,” he said, adding, “Abhishek Sharma has been very successful against England. It’ll be a tough game but I think we’ll do well.”


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