If you had hopped onto Twitter in recent days, one of the terms that are going viral is WIRM – which stands for ‘When It Really Matters’. It basically means those games when it matters more than ever. These matches are the must-win for the team: a loss will see the team get knocked out of the competition.
There have been players who didn’t have long or illustrious careers, but they stepped up on big occasions when it really mattered. For example Carlos Brathwaite, Marlon Samuels, and Grant Elliott.
There are some who have had great careers in and outside multi-nation tournaments and won their team the knockout and finals. Someone like Ben Stokes carries that great hype of turning up the heat when it really matters.
For India, it can be said with fair contention that there has been no bigger big-game player than Gautam Gambhir who stepped up when it really mattered the most.
Gautam Gambhir in ICC knockouts
Whenever people talk about India’s twin World Cup wins in the 21st century – the 2007 T20 World Cup in South Africa and the 2011 World Cup at home – Gautam Gambhir’s name pops up immediately in the minds of the fans, even though Gambhir was not the Man of the Match in either of the two World Cup finals.
However, he was the top-scorer for India in both the 2007 T20 WC Final vs Pakistan and the 2011 WC Final vs Sri Lanka.
Opening the innings against Pakistan in Johannesburg, Gautam Gambhir scored 75 runs in 54 balls and India went on to win the final by only 5 runs. In the 2011 WC final at the Wankhede, before MS Dhoni’s 91 and before the World Cup-winning sixer, it was Gautam Gambhir’s resilience and his temperament that rose to the occasion to score 97 runs
There’s more than just these two knocks. The Delhi-born batsman featured in a total of 5 knockout matches in ICC tournaments – 2007 T20 WC semi-final, 2007 final, and quarter-final, semi-final, and final in the 2011 WC.
Gautam Gambhir in those 5 knockout matches averaged a terrific 54.6 with three half-centuries to his name. He also scored 50 runs in the quarter-final against Australia in Ahmedabad.
People often talk about Ben Stokes being a big-game player for his fifties in the 2019 Final and the 2022 T20 WC final. But, Gautam Gambhir is right up there with the greatest big-game players the world has ever seen. To soak up the pressure and perform in knockouts is what separates him from most other batters in the world.
