Fire 'n' Ice: Gambhir's authority and Surya's freedom form a heady cocktail for India

New Delhi: Soon after Rahul Dravid ended his eventful and highly successful stint as Indian team's head coach, Rohit Sharma penned an emotional tribute on his Instagram wall where one sentence summed up the coach-captain relationship.

"My wife (Ritika Sajdeh) refers to you as my 'work wife' and I'm lucky to get to call you that too."

Those who know Rohit would vouch that he never speaks or exists in vacuum and meant every word when he compared the captain-coach relationship to a marriage where two people need to have a shared philosophy and sing from the same hymn sheet.

As India start their T20 World Cup title defence in less than 72 hours, one is tempted to look at Suryakumar Yadav and Gautam Gambhir's working relationship which has been fantastic, at least so going by the results -- a whopping 31 wins in 39 games with a winning percentage of 79.48.

In Indian cricket, coaches have always played the second fiddle for most successful captains.

Even the gregarious Ravi Shastri, who despite being one of the most astute brains, always drove home the point that it was Virat Kohli's team and the skipper was its general.

Ditto for John Wright-Sourav Ganguly, Gary Kirsten-MS Dhoni and Dravid-Rohit where the skipper was the real boss of the team.

After the Chappell-Dravid era, this is probably the first coach-captain duo where the gaffer has way more overwhelming presence in terms of strategic decision making.

Perhaps, T20 has evolved the quickest in terms of changes in template and that has warranted a more hands on football-manager style coaching, something that suits Gambhir's temperament.

And to give Gambhir's plans the shape it required, one needed Surya 2.0, a man sure of his skills and aware of his capabilities to execute them to the 'T'.

But in the past one year, there have been more examples than one to suggest that Gambhir is the planner and Surya is the executioner.

Obviously, there is a sweet history between the two as Surya the player first came into national limelight when he played the finisher's role for KKR under Gambhir's captaincy and his now famous acronym 'SKY' was actually given to him by the current head coach.

And in Indian cricket, it is an open secret that in 2024, the then newly-appointed head coach did have a huge say in Surya pipping Hardik Pandya to the post of T20 captaincy.

Another example was when Shubman Gill was straightaway made the vice-captain for the Asia Cup in Dubai.

Those who had tracked the developments in Indian cricket can vouch that pushing Sanju Samson down the order, perhaps, was the last item on skipper's agenda. Obviously, both chairman of selectors Ajit Agarkar and Gambhir had a role in that decision making.

In both cases, Surya's calm demeanour and restrained take impressed one and all and it has stayed like that throughout this journey.

As personalities -- Gambhir and Surya are like chalk and cheese and often that augurs well for the team.

Gambhir hails from an uber-rich business family that lived in central Delhi's old Rajendra Nagar while Surya hails from a middle-class family in Mumbai's Chembur.

But despite the slightly different socio-economic set-up and difference as persons, a lot of similarities can be traced between them.

In the case of Surya, despite his raw talent, the brashness of a beginner was the reason he fell foul with the state cricket establishment.

In the case of Gambhir, he never really had close friends. He was always, come, do your work and go home sort of a personality -- always intense and well aware that he wasn't as blessed as a Virender Sehwag, needing to work doubly harder to stake a claim in the team.

But even the left-hander has had his run-ins with state management.

Both Surya and Gambhir are nationalists to the core and wear that aspect of their character on their sleeves.

If Gambhir would tell Nitish Reddy about fighting on 22 yards is akin to "taking a bullet for the country" with intensity dripping through every part of his facial contour, Surya would casually chew the gum, not shake hands with Pakistan skipper Salman Ali Agha and tell a reporter from across the border that calling Indo-Pak matches a "rivalry" has become passe.

If the duo had any interest in football history, one such manager-captain duo was Tele Santana and Socrates, the architects of the best Brazilian team (1982) never to win the trophy despite dazzling the football lovers with their extraordinary skills.

But it is Carlos Alberto-Mario Zagallo's team and Luiz Felippe Scolari-Dunga combination that the world remembers because of bringing the trophy home.

The Gambhir-Surya partnership has been a heady cocktail and their shared philosophy of changing the grammar of T20 batting head-on will certainly have its pride of place when the history of the shortest format cricket chronicled.

But till then, it might sound harsh but the truth is that they will be judged by one tournament -- the T20 World Cup 2026.