‘Sachin Tendulkar was deeply unhappy when I joined the team. MS Dhoni meanwhile…’: Ex-India coach’s riveting details

Over the years, the Indian cricket team has had a number of excellent coaches, including John Wright and Ravi Shastri, as well as some less than stellar ones, such as Greg Chappell and Kapil Dev. The position of head coach of the Indian cricket team is one of the most well-known. With 1.4 billion people living in a cricket-crazed country, the stakes are incredibly high. However, guiding a group full of notable players makes the job more difficult. Former India head coach Gary Kirsten, on the other hand, found the initial encounter a little difficult. He detected an air of “unhappiness” in the locker room when he joined the team in late 2007, a year after India’s dismal ODI World Cup loss. He then stated why MS Dhoni stood out among the other players, comparing the former India captain to the legendary Sachin Tendulkar.

Gary Kirsten told Adam Collins on YouTube’s ‘The Final Word cricket podcast’ show that when he was appointed head coach of the Indian squad in December 2007, he noticed a ‘lot of scarring’ and ‘unhappiness’ in the team. The South African batting legend stated that Sachin Tendulkar was “very unhappy” and pondering retirement at the time. The tale of Tendulkar wanting to retire after the World Cup in the West Indies is well known, but Kirsten’s statement that he had continued to have those thoughts despite having dominated the latter part of 2007 comes as a bit of a surprise.

“The standout for me then was what kind of leadership was then required to take this very talented team and turn it into a world-beating team. That was the conundrum for any coach moving into that situation. When I took over there was definitely a lot of scaring in the team. There was a lot of unhappiness and hence for me it was more important to understand each individual and where they felt they fitted in the team and what was going to make them play cricket for the sheer joy,” Kirsten said.

“Sachin was probably a stand out for me because he was deeply unhappy at the time that I joined the team. He felt he had a lot to offer, but he wasn’t enjoying his cricket and he was at a time in his career when he felt may be he should retire. It was important for me to connect with him and make him feel that he had a massive contribution to make to the team and his contribution was more than what he needed to do.”

The Kirsten-Dhoni partnership will be remembered as the one that helped Indian cricket achieve its long-awaited goal of winning the World Cup. The partnership, which began in 2008, resulted in Team India winning the global championship in front of their home fans. Kirsten agreed that in India’s’superstar’ mentality, cricketers tend to forget that their duty is to perform for the team rather than to achieve individual milestones, and this was where Dhoni distinguished himself from players like Tendulkar.