Just a day after India won the ODI World Cup in 2011, I interviewed Paddy Upton, the team’s mental conditioning coach, and asked him who were the men for a crisis in the squad; the players who would raise their game in the face of adversity.
His answer stayed with me and now feels even more relevant because one of the names he mentioned is now the head coach of the Indian team.
“Gautam Gambhir seems to know how to give his absolute best when the stakes are highest,” Upton had then said. “Whether it is batting all day in New Zealand, or with an injured arm in South Africa or the innings in the World Cup final, when the pressure is on, he will not back off. Mahendra Singh Dhoni is another one who seems to cruise when the team is doing well but if he feels that the team really needs him, then there’s no holding back. VVS Laxman is another such individual. They are the men for a crisis. The challenge for us is to keep them interested when it gets boring.”
Gambhir is often caricatured on social media for his unbridled intensity but in the lead-up to the final match of the Super 8s against the West Indies at Kolkata, so much of the talk is about pressure. This setting should be right up his alley.
The only real question will be that he knew how to inspire himself but can he do that for the rest of the members in this team. It’s not so much about taking a bullet for everyone else as it was for Gambhir. Rather, as skipper Suryakumar Yadav says some prefer a relaxed approach.
Just before the first match of the 2026 T20 World Cup against USA, he was asked about dealing with the pressure
“Yes, you are playing at home, you are expected to win the tournament the way you have been playing your cricket,” Surya had said. “No one has defended the title. No one has won on home soil. Yes, everything runs in everyone’s mind. But at the same time, you have to be in the present as well. You have to see what you want to do on the given day, what kind of cricket you want to play. That is very important.”
He added: “Just stay in the present. Have your feet where you are, stay grounded. Because when you are playing at home, you want to be more excited. You want to give people more than they expect. At that time, you might make a mistake. But I think staying in the present will be the key in this World Cup. Even though we go till the end, but I think every game we play, we will have to be very relaxed and think about the game we are playing.”
That just goes to that each athlete has a unique way of dealing with pressure. Everyone has their own triggers and their own way of responding to them. What worked for Gambhir may not work for Surya, what worked for Mahendra Singh Dhoni wouldn’t work for Virat Kohli. But within each unique method lie clues that can be adapted and used.
Dhoni, for instance, was known as ‘Captain Cool’ for the nonplussed manner in which he dealt with high-pressure situations. He never lost of his cool, took it deep and would often count on the opposition losing their nerve before he did.
Now, he could do this because of his method relied heavily on visualisation. He understood the importance of mental strength and even as early as 2005, he would dedicate hours to breaking down challenges into the smallest possible denominators which he would then seek to tackle individually. The thinking behind this was to simplify the scenario so that these tiny solutions would eventually become part of a winning whole.
“When you take the big score and break it into small targets and you keep achieving those targets, it gives you confidence,” Dhoni had explained after a successful chase in the 2015 World Cup match against Zimbabwe in Auckland. “Also a factor, who is bowling well, who is not and who can you target? It sounds really complicated, but more often than not when you are in those situations it’s the subconscious that is working.”
In Kohli’s case, he prefers to ride the wave and use pressure as an opportunity, rather than something to fear.
“Fear comes from not wanting to take a risk because you are worried about the outcome and then you have to break it down to a point where you feel, ‘Okay, even if I feel like I might fail, I am going to fail doing what I want to do. I am not going to succumb to these demons in my head who are wanting me to be confused and get out,” said Kohli in May 2025.
The match against the West Indies on March 1 is a virtual quarter-final and will call upon players to find their own solutions but perhaps the greats can be a guiding light. Sometimes, in the cauldron of a World Cup match, that is all it takes.
