GG to reach Leeds by tomorrow as he had flown back home because of his mother’s poor health but will be back with the squad.
GG to rejoin India squad in Leeds on Tuesday.
The first England vs. India Test match begins on Friday, and India’s head coach Gautam Gambhir will join the rest of the team in Leeds on Tuesday.
When the senior India team and the visiting India A team played a three-day match in Beckenham, Gambhir was not present because he had flown home to Delhi on June 11 following his mother’s hospitalisation. It is believed that since then, her health has improved.
While Gambhir was away, the team’s preparation was managed by assistant coaches Ryan ten Doeschate and Sitanshu Kotak, as well as bowling coach Morne Morkel and India A coach Hrishikesh Kanitkar. In Beckenham, the match was played in private.
“There’s some quality energy in this group and, you know, that’s what you need,” Morkel said in an interview with bcci.tv, referring to the game itself and the preparations in general. You need to have team spirit in the group and be confident going into a Test series, and they have done a fantastic job thus far, in my opinion.
Following the conclusion of Sunday’s match, Kuldeep Yadav emphasised the significance of “volume” of overs for the bowlers in the group, who had only participated in T20 cricket at the IPL for more than two months prior to the five-Test series.
“We’ve played a lot of T20 in the last four-five months, so volume is very important,” Kuldeep told bcci.tv. “All the bowlers are instructed to bowl as many overs [in practice as they would in a match]: the fast bowlers will bowl at least 15 to 20 overs so they can build up fully for the Test match, and it’s the same for the spinners – the more they bowl, the better it will be.”