‘It gives so much freedom when coach..’: Sai Sudharsan on Gambhir backing him

4 min readJun 6, 2026 06:25 PM IST

India's Sai Sudharsan plays a shot vs Afghanistan in Mullanpur. (Express Photo | Kamleshwar Singh)

On the eve of the one-off Test between Indian and Afghanistan at Mullanpur, Indian head coach Gautam Gambhir had spoken about giving the Indian number three batsman Sai Sudharsan an extended run and showing faith in him as India’s number three. In the six Test matches prior to Saturday’s Test, Sudharsan had scored 307 runs at an average of 27.45 runs in 11 innings and the 24-year-old hit his third half-century in Tests with his knock of 81 runs against Afghanistan on Saturday. Sudharsan spoke about how having the backing of the head coach gives a player like so much ‘freedom’ and how it also takes the mind off from thinking about playing the next game or not.

“It gives so much freedom, it gives so much certainty mentally that when the coach and the team and the captain sports you and backs you. And wants you to do well for the country, he wants you to do well for the team and win games. So it is such an honour at first place and obviously, it gives a lot of freedom for you to express yourself and do what you can do at your best, rather than thinking about scoring or thinking about whether I will play the next game or not. Whatever thoughts of that sort, that never arises, because you’ve got a great freedom from the team. So I think it’s a pleasure,’ said Sudharsan while addressing the press conference at the end of the day’s play.

After Indian opener Yashasvi Jaiswal fell to pacer Mohammad Saleem after a knock of 24 runs, Sudharsan had joined vice-captain KL Rahul at the crease. The pair added 139 runs in 185 balls for the second wicket before Sudharsan fell to Saleem in the 43rd over of India’s innings. In the 139-run-partnership, Sudharsan was the dominant partner scoring 81 runs off 104 balls. Rahul, who went on to score a hundred later, scored 56 runs off 81 balls in the partnership with Sudharsan. When asked about what was the conversation between him and Rahul out in the middle and plans, Sudharsan shared how Rahul shares his inputs on how the wicket was behaving as well what options to score runs against the Afghanistan spinners the duo can take. “The conversation was more about understanding what was happening, understanding how the wicket was behaving and who was bowling what. It was more about how the conditions were. And with KL, he gives so much composure when you know, when I bat with him, he gives so much composure and he gives so much certainty. It helps as a batter and he sees the game very well. So he gives a lot of useful cues, which we would use in the game. He shared how the wicket was behaving. Today the wicket was slow and low most of the times and it was spinning. So the talk was about what options we can take. That’s what the conversations with KL were today,” said Sudharsan.

During last year’s England tour, the opposition had worked on getting him out through a leg side bowling plan with Sudharsan getting out edging to the leg slip or playing shots towards mid-wicket. On Saturday, Afghanistan too deployed the same tactics but Sudharsan negated the leg-side bowling and scored runs through mid-wicket and square leg. When asked about the similar tactics of bowling a leg-side plan, Sudharsan shared how he had worked on this in recent months and how he made tactical changes to counter that. “Obviously, when it happened in England, it was definitely something new for me. So I went back and worked on it and had got improved ideas on it, which helped me today. I was not thinking about the ball and just looking at the ball and playing on the merit. I practice in Chennai in a place called CB, So that’s where I always practice. There, I worked on it. I understood, I played a lot of balls and I saw what I did. What options I can take. It was more tactical rather than something technical,” said Sudharsan.

Nitin Sharma is an Assistant Editor with the sports team of The Indian Express. Based out of Chandigarh, Nitin works with the print sports desk while also breaking news stories for the online sports team. A Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award recipient for the year 2017 for his story ‘Harmans of Moga’, Nitin has also been a three-time recipient of the UNFPA-supported Laadli Media Awards for Gender Sensitivity for the years 2022, 2023 and 2024 respectively. His latest Laadli Award, in November 2025, came for an article on Deepthi Jeevanji, who won India’s first gold medal at the World Athletics Para Championship and was taunted for her unusual features as a child.

Nitin mainly covers Olympics sports disciplines with his main interests in shooting, boxing, wrestling, athletics and much more. The last 17 years with The Indian Express has seen him unearthing stories across India from as far as Andaman and Nicobar to the North East. Nitin also covers cricket apart from women’s cricket with a keen interest. Nitin has covered events like the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the 2011 ODI World Cup, 2016 T20 World Cup and the 2017 AIBA World Youth Boxing Championships.

An alumnus of School of Communication Studies, Panjab University, from where he completed his Masters in Mass Communications degree, Nitin has been an avid quizzer too. A Guru Nanak Dev University Colour holder, Nitin’s interest in quizzing began in the town of Talwara Township, a small town near the Punjab-Himachal Pradesh border. When not reporting, Nitin's interests lie in discovering new treks in the mountains or spending time near the river Beas at his hometown. ... Read More

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