From a 12-year-old’s hundred against us to a Rs. 300 cheque his uncle never cashed: My memories of a young Gautam Gambhir

I first saw Gautam Gambhir when he was about 12-13, and I nearly missed him. He was that slight. Even his pads looked borrowed from an older brother. Nothing about him suggested he was about to ruin a grown man’s afternoon.

I was leading for the Delhi Sports Journalists Association, a decent side in those days, and getting ready for the J.K. Bose tournament. Then Uday Gupte, the coach at Modern School, Barakhamba Road, came to me with a request. He had a young kid he was keen for me to see. Play him, he said, watch him, write about him if you like. It might do the boy some good.

“Are you out of your mind?” I said. “You want us to play a 12- or 13-year-old?” Uday did not budge. Eventually I gave in.

Modern School batted first. The boy who walked out was thin and quiet, swallowed up by his pads, and I remember glancing at Uday and wondering what exactly he was putting this child through.

Then the young dynamite started batting, and I stopped wondering.

Front foot, back foot, pull, cut, sweep. Whatever our bowlers tried, he had an answer ready, as if he had read the plan before we made it. Gautam got a hundred.

Let me be clear, because people tend to hear this story wrong. This was not a schoolboy cashing in against some weekend journalists. We had bowlers who knew their business. What stayed with me was the age, the range of strokes, and the calm. He had no reason to feel awed by any of it. He had come to bat, so he batted. I remember asking him, “What was on your mind? A century?” Gautam replied with a dead face, “ Yes. Soch ke aaya tha (Had come with a pledge).”

There is another story from those school days. It was a tournament organised by the Cambridge Foundation School, Rajouri Garden. He was still playing junior cricket. Uday cautioned him about a left-arm spinner reputed to be parsimonious in his spells. “He might trouble us,” Uday recalled telling Gautam. The youngster heard him out and assured Uday he would take care of it. Gautam hit that spinner for six sixes. Three balls were lost.

Gautam also must be a rare cricketer who played a match against his own school. He would practise at the Playmakers Club, run by Satish Dayal, who also organised an excellent tournament for juniors. Gautam was sort of a loner and had to be persuaded to turn out for the school. Once he was convinced, he emerged a star, winning matches single-handedly.

At a tournament in 1998, each match played over two days, sponsored by Bonton (the spectacles-and-lenses brand), and organised by former Test batsman Gursharan Singh, under the aegis of Gyan Bharti School, Saket. Gautam was declared `Player of the Series” and was awarded a one-year scholarship of Rs. 300 a month. Useful money, even then. Recently, when Gupte launched his academy at Gyan Bharti School, Pawan Gulati (Gautam’s maternal uncle) walked in carrying that very first cheque, Gautam’s first earning. He had never cashed it. Pawan’s reasoning was simple. “This was only the first of thousands I expected him to earn.” Pawan wanted to keep the cheque as proof of what he expected his nephew to become.

Gautam went on to play for India and win two World Cups, the T20 in 2007 and the ODI in 2011, with top individual scores in each of them, 75 in 2007 and 97 in 2011. Gautam has refused to take any credit for those two knocks and has always insisted that it is a team sport, not about individual brilliance. He became one of the finest openers the country has had, led Kolkata Knight Riders to IPL titles, and is now coaching the national side. Gulati, it turned out, had been right in his assessment of his nephew.

Gursharan remembered Gautam as an “attacking player. Nimbly-footed against the spinners, stepping out often, strong on the back foot. He oozed quality, and I knew he would play for India. “I have heard this anecdote about Gautam of one of his practice sessions at Sanjay Bhardwaj’s academy in Bharat Nagar. He batted for an hour or so without pads against the spinners to demonstrate the importance of playing the ball late and reading the bowler’s hand. Not one ball hit his legs.” Bhardwaj, who was later bestowed with the Dronacharya Award, played a huge role in mentoring Gautam’s rise.

I have thought about those two afternoons many times since, because they explain something about Gautam that I believe people, including myself, have got wrong for years. The aggression was real, and sometimes hard to be around. He argued, he confronted, he gave nothing away. But there was another side to him, and I only learned it slowly, over years of watching him and meeting the people he came from.

The Gambhirs were comfortable. His father was in the garments business, and denim was a big part of it. But the house in Ramjas Road was grounded in a way you don’t always see. Plenty of people who watched Gautam play as a youngster would never have guessed where he came from. He had good people around him. His maternal grandmother, Asha, was a towering influence. His mami, Supriya, the wife of his maternal uncle, raised him with the love she would have given a son of her own. And his uncle, Pawan Gulati, was no sideline cheerleader. Pawan took him to the grounds, to school, and home, and was simply always there. Pawan was just as eager about the smaller days. I can still see him coming into our office with scorecards in hand, asking whether we could mention Gautam alongside the other performers. He never asked for a headline. He just wanted the boy’s work to be seen.

Another side of Gautam

Pawan told me something else about Gautam, and it has nothing to do with cricket. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when many poor families were struggling to put food on the table, Gautam started a canteen that served meals for Re 1. The idea was his own. He did not want to hand out food for free. He wanted people to pay a little so they could eat without feeling as if they were being given charity. The canteens still charge the same price. He has never publicised any of this. Medicines, clothes, school fees: when he thinks someone needs help, he quietly gives it. It rarely comes up when people talk about his temper.

Three parathas and a lovely home

When I wanted to interview Gautam, I tried to do it on the ground, quickly and efficiently. He wouldn’t have it. “Sir, come home,” he said. So I went, and the first thing I noticed was how quiet the house was. You expect a famous cricketer’s home to be the talk of the lane. This one wasn’t. The family kept to itself, and I was told that people who had lived nearby for years didn’t necessarily know Gautam Gambhir was their neighbour. Whatever drama people associated with him on the field stayed outside the gate.

I also noticed how particular he was about his things. His kit and clothes had to be in order, properly kept. He didn’t like anyone touching them, not even in the Indian dressing room. But what I remember best from that afternoon is the food.

Supriya ji made a paratha, and then another, and then another. I have travelled through Punjab many times, but I learned something about parathas in that house. I devoured three. I can still hear her telling me to have more. She showed love in small things and made no fuss about it. She is no longer with us, and when I think of that visit, I wonder how much of Gautam was shaped by her and by everyone in that home.

Gautam once told me the only person he was afraid of was his grandmother. I laughed, because I had seen how he stood his ground with nearly everyone else: opponents, selectors, men much senior to him in the game. But at home he was still a grandson who knew exactly who was in charge.

The fighter who would not give in

As Gautam grew older, the boy from those early matches was still recognisable. He was an electric fielder; he ran superbly between the wickets and could bend his game to whatever the situation demanded. He also fought battles for other people. I remember his arguments with the Delhi selectors over players he thought deserved a chance. He insisted on including Sumit Narwal, who had been representing Haryana. “He resurrected my career, got me a job (with Oil and Natural Gas Corporation). Hard to describe in words what he means to me. He is a kind man, and few people know he has a jolly side to his personality, laughing loudly and cracking jokes,” said Sumit, who claimed four for 56 on debut against Baroda in the semifinal of the 2007-8 season. Gautam’s contribution in that match was a splendid 132 not out, which finished the game.

Gautam also famously backed Navdeep Saini, whom others felt was not good enough for Delhi. Gautam could be impossible about it, but there was usually real cricketing conviction under the noise. He defied Delhi selectors to fight for Saini. I was at the Roshanara Ground for that match (against Vidarbha on 14 December, 2013), and Gautam, as Delhi captain, argued with Match Referee Sanjay Patil, who insisted that Saini was not yet a registered player with the BCCI. Gautam was prepared to get banned, if it came to it. Gautam did not relent. The Match Referee gave in, and Saini made his debut. Gautam was indeed a player’s captain.

That isn’t to say every argument was fair, or that his behaviour can always be defended. He could rub people up the wrong way, and he did. But I have always thought it worth separating how he made his point from the point he was making. If he believed a decision was wrong, he had no interest in being agreeable about it.

His batting had the same stubborn streak. He had a stable base, read the line early and knew when to attack and when to wait. He never tried to bat like someone else. You could see this best in his partnership with Virender Sehwag. They were opposites who made each other better. Sehwag played shots that seemed to ignore the textbook, while Gambhir soaked up pressure and built an innings around it. Gautam once told me how much he enjoyed batting with Sehwag. When he was struggling to score freely, he asked Sehwag for advice, and Sehwag’s answer was simple: hit the ball hard, and it would clear the fielders. “If I try that,” Gautam’s reply to Sehwag was candid. “the ball will go straight into the hands of a fielder. I am not Sehwag, and he knew it.

Former Delhi and North Zone batsman Rajat Bhatia and Gautam attended the same school and shared many glorious moments with the Delhi team. “Please don’t judge Gautam from one incident here and there. His commitment to Delhi is special. It shows his character. When not playing for India, he was always available for Delhi, always performing for Delhi, insisting on backing the players he had picked. See his contribution in the key matches in the 2007-08 when Delhi won the Ranji Trophy,” said Rajat, who scored an unbeaten 139 in the Ranji final against Uttar Pradesh. Out for zero in the first innings, Gautam won the game with an unbeaten 130 in the second. The match was over in four days.

Napier

India is due to travel to New Zealand later this month, and I keep drifting back to Napier in 2009. It is still, for me, the innings that sums him up. India had conceded a first-innings lead of 314. Nobody was thinking about runs for their own sake any more. The job was to bat time, to frustrate the bowlers and to save the Test. Gambhir made 137, off 436 balls.

I spoke to Harbhajan Singh about that innings. What stayed with Harbhajan was the result. “Cricket is full of great hundreds in wins and great hundreds in defeats, he said, but this one had pulled India out of a match that looked gone. For us, the draw felt like a victory. I remember Gautam’s grit, and how hard it was to shift him once he had settled. It took a rare kind of courage, and not the kind people expected from Gambhir. Not the courage to attack, but the courage to keep defending, ball after ball, and to put the team ahead of any milestone.

For a while he was known mostly as the aggressive one, the man whose temper got more attention than his runs. Napier showed the other Gambhir, the patient one, who could put away his instincts and simply stay. He never needed everyone to like him. He wanted to compete, to prove a point, to win, and sometimes he lost people along the way. But those who knew him off the field saw someone more complicated: a man from a close family, fiercely loyal to those he trusted, and convinced that hard work could take him a long way.

Yesterday, October 14, Gautam turned 45. I thought about that first hundred against the journalists, the schoolboy and the left-arm spinner, the cheque his uncle never cashed and the parathas his mami kept putting on my plate. When India lands in New Zealand, Napier will come back with it, and so will that small boy in the oversized pads.

Published on Oct 15, 2026