Avengers Assemble! A look at Gautam Gambhir’s right-hand men - Abhishek Nayar and Ryan ten DoeschatePremium

Gambhir is well aware that winning is the only measure of success; towards that end, he will believe that he has chosen his comrades in arms well and wisely, that he has taken the first steps in what he hopes will be a journey of fulfilment and silverware galore

Strange, but true: India’s World Cup-winning squad of 1983 had precisely one individual for support. P.R. Man Singh beat back the challenge of Niranjan Shah through an election to earn the right to be the team manager, rounding off the contingent of 15 that would officially represent the country at the last of the 60-over World Cups.

Single-handedly, Man Singh had to manage travel and training arrangements, dole out allowances, ensure that all official commitments were honoured, facilitate the immediate treatment of injured players, the works… Get it, right?

The mushrooming of the cricketing ecosystem has brought us to such a pass that today, on average, there is one member of the support staff for each player in the squad. That’s no longer an excess; with cricket leaving behind its amateur days and stepping into a bold, new professional world where there is no place for excuses or laggards, this has become a necessity, not a luxury.

INTERVIEW | India needs to do well in the first three matches in Paris: Herman Kruis

Cricket head coaches, like their counterparts in other team sports, tend to bring their own coaching staff when they take charge. More than anything else, it’s because they know what these individuals bring to the table, they trust them implicitly and they know that everyone is on the same page, pulling in the same direction. It’s not that they don’t have confidence in the existing personnel; a fresh start is sometimes not just welcome but imperative because in today’s world, remaining static is often a retrograde step.

Support personnel of late have tended to follow the head coach out of the scheme of things. When Ravi Shastri’s tenure ended in November 2021, bowling coach B Arun and fielding coach R Sridhar, who had been with the Indian team since the second half of 2014 — except for one year in Arun’s case when Anil Kumble was the head coach — wrote to the Board of Control for Cricket in India expressing their desire to move on.

When Rahul Dravid succeeded Shastri, he brought Paras Mhambrey and T. Dilip on board as bowling and fielding coaches respectively while retaining the services of Vikram Rathour, who had succeeded Sanjay Bangar as the batting coach after the 2019 50-over World Cup.