The Lucknow Super Giants team was eventually knocked out of the play-offs and the way they lost against Mumbai seemed to disintegrate under the pressure of a big game.

The captain of this team was KL Rahul, who was criticized at the start of the tournament for his simple strike rate and later withdrew from the tournament due to being unfit, then Krunal Pandya was given the responsibility of the captaincy.

The manager of this team was former Zimbabwe captain and former England manager Andy Flower, but in the truest sense, Gautam Gambhir, the mentor of the Lucknow Super Giants team, was seen as the biggest personality.

The way they dropped wicket after wicket as they chased runs against the Mumbai Indians, Gambhir’s facial expressions would have said a lot on their own.

After the match, the way he was seen talking to team owner Sanjiv Goenka in his usual serious posture, it seemed that the preparations for the next season and the changes for the next season had already started.

Not playing South African starter Quinton de Kock in this match surprised many pundits and when asked questions to captain Krunal Pandya, he admitted it was a very difficult decision.

Gambhir is believed to have had a great influence behind this bold decision.

But, Tom Moody, who was the coach of the Punjab and Hyderabad IPL teams, called this decision strange. 70, 29, 16 and 28 runs. These are the scores of De Kock’s four innings that came out of his bat on the given occasion in IPL this time.

In such a situation, you can guess that if an experienced mentor like Gambhir made this decision to keep Kyle Myer in the playing XI, then why is there so much debate about it.

The West Indies opener match started the IPL on a high note but he managed just one innings with the bat (48 against Gujarat Titans) in the last 5 matches, 18, 2,14, 0 in the remaining four matches.

But this season will always be remembered for the ‘Virat’ controversy with Kohli mentoring Gambhir instead of cricketing decisions.

The way that Gambhir, despite being a former captain and superior to Kohli, was seen fighting after the match was over was amazing.

At one point, it seemed that Kohli was calmly trying to win Gambhir over to his side while maintaining restraint.

Regardless, what happens on the field happens between the players and in such a situation, it probably wasn’t the proper behavior of a team mentor to jump into a controversial topic and add more weight to the matter.

Kohli was also criticized and the BCCI also fined both of them.

Gambhir is not only the mentor of an IPL team but also a member of parliament.

It is said that often a person’s greatest strength becomes their weakness. In the context of Gambhir, this probably fits well.

Former Team India mental conditioning coach Paddy Upton has written in his book “The Barefoot Coach” that he did his best and least impressive job with a player like Gambhir.

Claiming to have glimpsed a tremendous contradiction in Gambhir’s personality, Upton described him as a “pessimistic” player.

But at the same time it is said that Gambhir was also very determined which is why he also became the world number 1 Test batsman in 2009.

In fact, anyone who has followed Gambhir’s career closely will agree with Upton’s view that Gambhir cannot be separated as a completely black and white character.

Gambhir, who stayed with his senior Virender Sehwag in the early days from the Delhi locker room to the India team locker room, later did not stop talking bluntly with Sehwag himself about the wrong approach on the pitch.

The way Gambhir was passed over in the 2007 ODI World Cup and Robin Uthappa was taken on the Caribbean tour, he was worried about this for a long time.

But, years later, when Uthappa played under Gambhir’s captaincy at Kolkata Knight Riders, he also described it as the best spell of his career.

Uthappa even said recently that he used to feel very lonely after Gambhir left Kolkata.

Anyone who has played under Gambhir in Kolkata is as convinced of his leadership as most of the players who played under the captaincy of Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Rohit Sharma.

During the fight with Kohli, a nearly decade-old video clip also went viral on social media where Gambhir had awarded his ‘Man of the Match’ award to Kohli as both had scored centuries.

And Gambhir felt that the gift meant more to the young player.

Gambhir also took time to make Kolkata two-time champions as captain and his role as a mentor in leading a new team like Lucknow to the play-offs in the first two years should be appreciated.

If anyone could have made a strong decision as a serious mentor, it was the captaincy of KL Rahul.

However, Gambhir doesn’t have much of a problem with Rahul’s style and has defended him on several occasions.

As Gambhir assesses this season for himself, he will need to make a bold decision about Rahul’s hit rate and captaincy.

And who knows if he succeeds in doing this, then in 2024, as a mentor, he will also be able to fulfill his dream of bringing the trophy to Lucknow.

After all, Gambhir, just like Dhoni, is one of the few players in the world to have won IPL trophies as a captain and has also been a part of the No. 1 Test squad in T20 and ODI World Cups as a player.