Is Gautam Gambhir Creating a Toxic Atmosphere in Team India?

Gautam Gambhir has been accused of harming the Indian team environment. And such accusations came from his former teammate, Manoj Tiwary. He also talked about how Gambhir has changed things in the Indian team since he became the coach.

Gambhir has done a lot of controversial things since he became the coach. Taking a look at them, the statement of Manoj Tiwary would make sense to the fans.

Manoj Tiwary blamed Gautam Gambhir for the early retirement of some star players. Indian fans were left in shock this year, with the number of retirements they saw. First, Ravichandran Ashwin retired in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

But the pressure mounted on them by the BCCI, and mainly Gautam Gambhir. As a result, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli also retired from the Test format in May 2025. This marked the end of the Test legacy for the fans, as they used to mainly watch the games for their performances.

Another controversy that took place under Gautam Gambhir came after the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Several team news items were leaked to the media during the series. As India ended up losing against Australia by 1-3, about Gautam Gambhir.

At this point, he must have decided to play the blame game. Thus, he told the BCCI selectors that it was Sarfaraz Khan leaking the team information to the media. Gambhir was not able to present any proof for the same, but since then, Sarfaraz Khan has also not been picked in the Indian line-up.

There was yet another controversy between Gautam Gambhir and maybe the entire Indian team. When the team lost against Australia, Gambhir looked for some reasons to change. And he didn't change the squad or help players to improve. Instead,

With these rules, he said that the families cannot travel with the team throughout the tour. Such actions made sure that Gambhir wants the team unity at any cost. But for this, blaming the players' families, who came to support them at different venues, was not good. Various cricket analysts also criticised this decision of Gautam Gambhir.

Gautam Gambhir was also accused by former Indian players of favouritism in picking the squad. Shreyas Iyer, who excelled in the format of T20, was not included in the Asia Cup team. These were the allegations made by Sadagoppan Ramesh, who had been a former Indian team opener.

He made it very clear that all Gambhir does is select those he likes, and he will discard those whom he does not like. Perhaps this is why Shreyas Iyer has not been included in the Indian team since the Champions Trophy 2025. He further remarked that by now Gautam Gambhir should have turned Yashasvi Jaiswal into an all-format player.

Blaming Gambhir for favouritism is clear from the selection of Harshit Rana and Shubman Gill. Rana is now available for the team across all formats, despite playing just 10 games. On the other hand, Shubman Gill remains the skipper in Test and ODI format, while being the vice captain in the T20I format.