Speaking to Star Sports, Gambhir recalled his words to Gill after the Oval triumph, “I told him, after we won the Oval Test match, that ‘you have passed your most difficult test. The transition is over. And from here on, things will become much, much easier’.”
“And I hope things get easier for him, because I think he deserves every bit of it. The amount of criticism and the amount of things people have said about him. A lot of unfair things have been said about him,” he added.
Gambhir acknowledged that captaining India is among the toughest jobs in world cricket, and praised Gill not just for his runs, but for his poise in leading the team on English soil.
“Sometimes you put players at risk of their potential. You expect a 25-year-old kid to have an average Test score of 50. To make runs everywhere. Over a period of time, that will happen. I was never shocked that he made 750 runs. But more than that, I was happy about the way he led the team,” he said.