For Gambhir, the game against Haryana was of personal importance too. The left-hand opening batsman had spent almost a year outside the Indian team, in Test, ODI and T20. And recently, he had been relegated from Grade A to Grade B in the BCCI's list of contracted players. And then there was this impending selection committee meeting for India's three ODI and two Test tour to South Africa.
The choice was between a green seeming track at the Roshanara Club Ground and the flat batting paradise at Delhi's traditional home ground Ferozeshah Kotla. At Roshanara lay team's best chance, with a decent bowling attack comprising Ishant Sharma, Parvinder Awana and Pawan Suyal. Kotla seemingly was the easier option for Gambhir to get some easy runs ahead of the selection.
Gambhir chose Roshanara. With a cracking 153 on the third day of the game, Gambhir proved he is ready to take the tough route to personal glory if that serves team's interest. Today, Delhi will need five Haryana wickets to register their first outright win of the season and gain six points. It also makes sense in the bigger picture.
Runs on such tracks will mean a lot more to selectors and to himself but there have been instances in the past where some Indian players, as captains of domestic teams, have chosen a friendly pitch with an eye on making a comeback.
No personal goals
As his coach Sanjay Bhardwaj told Mirror, "If Gambhir was thinking about making a comeback to the Indian team, it would have been easy for him to have the match at Kotla where the chances of him getting runs would be higher. But Gambhir spoke about the importance of winning this game with his teammates and chose the green Roshanara track. As always, he is only thinking about the team winning and how he can contribute to the bigger picture. He wasn't thinking of his own century or 200 or 300." Yesterday his 153 came in 253 balls with 25 fours. The third fifty came in just 37 balls.
This is not the first time that Gambhir is out of the national team after making his debut more than a decade back. The most recent slump has been a long one though. His last Test ton came in January 2010 and he eventually lost his place in the Indian Test team earlier this year during the home series against Australia. Though, his exclusion from the ODI team can be best explained by MS Dhoni's philosophical critique of "one-dimensional players" in general.
Question mark on Vijay
The recent journey started against West Indies A in the interior Karnataka, in Shimoga and Hubli. In his first knock, he was cautious against pace but secure in defense. In Hubli, he was much more fluid, and even made a hundred. He started off cautiously, playing the seamers from the crease at times but slowly improved as that knock progressed.
In Delhi's last Ranji Trophy game, that coincided with Sachin Tendulkar's farewell, against Mumbai, Gambhir scored twin fifties. He retired in the second innings as the game petered towards a draw. And now this hundred.
The string of good runs couldn't have come at a better time for him and the Indian team. Although M Vijay, who replaced him as an opener, celebrated his return to the Indian team with twin centuries in that series against Australia, he managed just 26 and 43 against a poor West Indies recently. The Tamil Nadu batsman is also going through a horrid Ranji season, falling for a duck against UP in the current round.
Inexperienced party
What makes Gambhir's return to form - a 150 against a more than decent fast bowling attack of Haryana that a few days ago had troubled Sachin Tendulkar at Lahli - even better timed is that it gives selectors the right reasons to add him to what will be an inexperienced touring party to South Africa. Shikhar Dhawan is just 3Tests old, Cheteshwar Pujara 15 Tests, Virat Kohli 20 and Rohit Sharma 2.
None barring Pujara have faced the likes of Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel in Test cricket in South Africa. The bouncy tracks there and the pace of the Proteas bowlers is sure to make things difficult for Indian batsmen and Dhoni can well do with a gutsy player like Gambhir in the team.
But as Bhardwaj says, Gambhir himself is not thinking about South Africa. "If he was thinking about personal goals he wouldn't have tried to make room and play that shot that he played in the 2011 World Cup final when at 97. He thinks and approaches the game with a simple mindset. As he tells me these days: 'No one can keep me away from the team if I keep getting runs and no one can keep me in the team if I don't make runs'."
Just a couple of days ago, he told the media: "I don't play for comebacks. These words do not exist in my dictionary." But with this 153 yesterday, he has indeed boosted his comeback chances.
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