Gautam Gambhir

Gautam Gambhir is an Indian cricketer, especially a left handed opening batsman and a right arm leg break bowler. He has been in the Indian national cricket team since 2003 in the ODIs and in the tests since 2004. At present, he has been bought by the Royal Challengers Bangalore team to play for the IPL 5 season.

In 2000, Gambhir was selected for the first intake of the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore. In domestic cricket, Gambhir had an average score of above 50 and his two consecutive double-hundreds in 2002, making him a strong contender for the opening slot in the Indian cricket team.

In 2003, Gambhir made his ODI debut against Bangladesh in the TVS Cup. In his third match, he was named ‘Man of the Match’ for scoring 71. In 2005, he scored his first century against Sri Lanka, during which he scored 103 runs in only 97 deliveries.

Gambhir’s test debut came in 2004 in the fourth match of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. In the second test against South Africa he scored 96. His first test century was against Bangladesh in December 2004. However, as he repeatedly struggled against Chaminda Vaas at home, he was dropped from the Test team. Gambhir is often blamed for not converting his starts of 20 or 30 into larger scores.

When Gambhir was out of the Test team, he played several ODIs for India from 2005 to 2007 but was not included in the 2007 Word Cup squad. However, for the Bangladesh tour of 2007, Gambhir scored his second century and was selected for the Ireland tour. In the very first match, he was awarded ‘Man of the Match’ for an unbeaten 80.

In the 2007 ICC World Twenty20, Gambhir performed exceedigly well and was the top scorer for India scorinng 227, with an average score of 37.83 including three half-centuries. In the final against Pakistan, he scored 75 runs from just 54 deliveries.

During the 2007-08 Commonwealth Bank series, he scored 102 not out against Sri Lanka at the Gabba. In the match against Australia, he scored 113 from 119 deliveries, which is his career best performance.

Career Highlights

Gambhir was the leading run-scorer at the Commonwealth Bank series with 440 runs. He was selected by Delhi Daredevils in the Indian Premier League for a price of 725,000 USD per year. He was named the ICC Test Player of the year in 2009 and ranked number one batsman in the ICC rankings in July 2009.