"No Thanks": Australia Great Declines Suggestion To Coach Indian Test Team

Former Australian cricketer Jason Gillespie declined a suggestion to coach the Indian Test team as they face struggles in the longest format of the game after back-to-back home whitewash Test series losses to New Zealand and South Africa. Jason, who also served as Pakistan's head coach in 2024 from April to December, was interacting with his followers on his X handle. One of the users posted to Gillespie: "Jason, you need to coach India now because they are not just losing but getting whitewashed at home twice. They need you seriously."

To this, Gillespie replied: "No thanks."

No thanks. https://t.co/TJgodRMkVJ

— Jason Gillespie (@dizzy259) January 1, 2026

While Team India has been doing exceptionally well under Gautam Gambhir in limited-overs cricket-lifting the ICC Champions Trophy and Asia Cup T20I edition in unbeaten runs-the same cannot be said about Test cricket. Under him, India has won just seven Tests, lost 10, and drawn two.

As far as the series record is concerned, India started off well with a 2-0 series win against Bangladesh at home, but back-to-back setbacks against New Zealand and Australia (a 1-3 Border-Gavaskar Trophy loss away from home) led to legends Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, and Ravichandran Ashwin hanging up their whites.

The 2-2 draw against England away from home, in one of the most gripping Test series in recent years under the leadership of a young Shubman Gill, followed by a 2-0 series win at home against West Indies, did instill hope-before Proteas skipper Temba Bavuma, spinner Simon Harmer, and pace all-rounder Marco Jansen chipped in with some of the best performances of the year to first deny India a chase of merely 124 runs at Kolkata and then inflict on them their biggest-ever Test loss by 408 runs.

In both Tests, India missed the services of skipper Gill, who went down due to a neck injury sustained just minutes into his batting stint at the Kolkata Test, with Rishabh Pant stepping in as captain.

But India did well enough to secure hard-fought ODI and T20I series wins against the Proteas by margins of 2-1 and 3-1 respectively, making the home series a decent affair overall.

Now, India's most significant challenge ahead is not Test cricket for a while, but defending their T20 World Cup crown-won under Rohit Sharma's captaincy last year-with a new-look team led by Suryakumar Yadav in the tournament starting on February 7. India will start their campaign against the USA on the same day in Mumbai and have been placed alongside Pakistan, Namibia, the Netherlands, and the USA in Group A.

While the young Indian team has displayed a golden standard of T20I cricket for the most part this year in their unbeaten run across all series, playing their first T20 World Cup in the absence of stalwarts Rohit and Virat for the first time in several years, and in front of a home crowd, will be an interesting challenge.

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Topics mentioned in this article

India Cricket Team Pakistan Cricket Team Australia Cricket Team Jason Gillespie Gautam Gambhir BCCI Cricket