"You Could Literally Pick Three Teams": Gary Kirsten's Verdict on Why Gambhir's Anti-Superstar Stand Is Built on the IPL's Greatest Legacy
There is a line Gautam Gambhir used in his post-World Cup interview with ANI that, in another context, might have read as arrogance. In this context — the week after India became the first team in cricket history to successfully defend the T20 World Cup title — it reads as a coaching philosophy vindicated in the most comprehensive way possible.
“The media wants to create superstars. My job as head coach is to create a super team. That is a simple difference and that difference will always remain.”
Gary Kirsten, who coached India to the 2011 ODI World Cup and watched a generation of Indian superstars up close, heard that quote and did not hesitate for a moment.
“I think he is absolutely spot on.”
Gambhir’s Philosophy: Privilege, Not Entitlement
Gambhir’s “super team over superstars” stance has its most articulate expression in a consistent message he delivered throughout India’s World Cup campaign, in training sessions, team meetings and press conferences alike: being in that dressing room is a privilege, not an entitlement.
“I do not look at the amount of runs they have scored. I do not look at the amount of social media following they have. I do not look at what TRP they bring to the people or to the broadcaster. I only look at what they bring to the team and what they bring to the country,” Gambhir said to ANI.
The context for this philosophy is the era he inherited. When Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli retired from T20 internationals in 2024, a prevailing assumption was that India’s T20I team would go through a transition period. The commercial weight that the two most marketable cricketers on earth had carried — in broadcast contracts, sponsorships, fan engagement metrics and broadcasters’ TRP calculations — would create a vacuum that the team might struggle to fill.
Gambhir’s position, held without apology from his first day as head coach, was that the vacuum was a fiction. “I’ve always believed that, and I’ve always told the boys as well, that being in that dressing room is a privilege, not an entitlement,” he told Times of India. “The T20 format is about impact. It’s not about milestones or individual performances. It’s about going out there and creating an impact.”
That framing — impact over milestones, team over individual, privilege over entitlement — is precisely what produced a World Cup campaign in which eight different India batters made meaningful contributions across the knockout phase, in which Axar Patel could be dropped, apologised to and recalled, in which Abhishek Sharma could score seven runs across three group matches and still bat in the final.
Kirsten’s Backing: The IPL Changed Everything
What makes Kirsten’s endorsement significant is not just who he is — India’s most successful foreign head coach — but what he brings to the conversation: a front-row view of Indian cricket at the precise moment the shift from individual-centric to depth-centric began.
Kirsten took over India in 2008. The IPL launched in 2008. He coached India through the birth of franchise cricket in the subcontinent and watched it reshape the structure, culture and psychology of Indian cricket from the inside.
“I think India was driven largely around that superstardom status of each individual and there was a massive commercial entity to that as well. But I think the IPL has definitely brought in a different dynamic there,” Kirsten told Wisden Cricket’s The Scoop on YouTube. “There are just so many good Indian players around now. You could literally pick three teams.”
His most striking illustration of India’s depth came from his stint as a consultant to the Namibia team during the T20 World Cup 2026 group stage. When Namibia were in Bengaluru for preparatory matches, they faced not the senior India side — but an India A regional team composed primarily of IPL players and emerging domestic cricketers. The result: Namibia were bowled out for approximately 60 runs.
“It’s absolutely magnificent,” Kirsten said of the BCCI Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru. “We played against an India A ‘regional’ team which had IPL players in it but we maybe got bowled out for 60 and there’s just so much depth in the system in India now. So it makes complete sense that the whole game resting on one, two, three, four individuals is not necessary anymore.”
The First Dual ICC Trophy-Winning Coach in Indian History
Gambhir, who took over as India’s head coach in July 2024 following Rahul Dravid’s departure, is now the first Indian head coach to win two ICC trophies — the 2025 ICC Champions Trophy and the 2026 T20 World Cup — across a two-year tenure that began with immediate criticism over his management style, his relationship with certain senior players, and early series results.
The criticism of Gambhir-the-coach has never been about his intentions; even his critics acknowledge the intelligence and conviction behind his team-first philosophy. It has been about his communication style — the directness that Suryakumar Yadav himself has acknowledged can feel confrontational to players who are not prepared for it. Gambhir addressed this directly: “I have always been misunderstood, as a player and as a coach. If being honest makes me a villain, I am okay with that. One day, my honesty will defend me.”
It appears that day has arrived. India are world champions. The Gambhir experiment is now a Gambhir legacy. And the players who navigated his system — who accepted batting position changes without complaint, who played roles rather than chasing personal milestones, who sat on the bench and stayed ready — are the ones lifting trophies.
The Evolution Kirsten Sees
Kirsten’s commentary on coaching itself is worth dwelling on. Now preparing to take over as Sri Lanka’s head coach, he reflected on how the profession itself must evolve alongside the game’s increasing talent density:
“Well I had a lot of [superstar players] when I started in 2008. Now you don’t only have five of them. You’ve got 25 of them now. So it is a very different landscape and you need to evolve as a coach. The access to and the use of data is becoming more and more relevant. The domestic leagues have taught us that you can find competitive advantage in that space.”
“You need to evolve and for me, working with different teams, it’s more around understanding what that environment requires of you as a coach. Rather than saying ‘I’m going to stamp my philosophy and style on a team.’”
That self-awareness — from a coach who built his reputation at the exact moment India’s superstar culture was at its peak — is the cleanest possible endorsement of where Gambhir has taken the team. The game has changed. The coach has to change with it. The era of the untouchable superstar is over, not because superstars no longer exist, but because they no longer need to be untouchable — there are simply too many good players waiting behind them.
Gambhir understood this first. Kirsten agrees. The scoreboard in Ahmedabad, where India beat New Zealand by 96 runs, makes the argument that needs no further elaboration.