“The whole world is watching” - Madan Lal reacts to Kris Srikkanth’s ‘yes man’ theory on Harshit Rana

Former Indian cricketer Madan Lal has opened up on his former teammate Kris Srikkanth’s comments about Harshit Rana being a ‘yes man’ to the Indian head coach Gautam Gambhir to get into the Indian team across formats. 

However, Madan, while speaking on the YouTube channel Kadak, has dismissed claims of favouritism in India’s T20 World Cup selection. He went on to add that the selection decisions are driven by merit and team requirements.

“I don’t agree with this ‘yes-man.' That doesn’t happen in Indian cricket. You are running a national team, not a club team where you just need someone to agree with everything. There is no such thing as a ‘yes-man’ here, where someone is played just because another person wants it," Madan Lal said on the YouTube channel Kadak.

“All these are outside talks. This never really happens internally. This is the Indian national team, an international team. The whole world is watching, and everyone in our country is watching the team. I don’t agree that such things happen,” he added.

While Gambhir has been facing severe backlash for too many changes in the batting order in the shortest format of the game, Lal backed the Indian head coach for being within his rights to make such calls.

“Look, Gambhir has his own style. As a coach, whether it is the assistant coach or any of the foreign coaches involved, they are all responsible. The T20 format offers a lot of flexibility. In many situations, such as during the recent T20 international series against South Africa, he must have experimented. With the World Cup coming up, he would have been thinking about which player fits best in which role. But there is no harm in doing all these things because the coach is answerable to everyone. If the team doesn’t do well, the coach is responsible, not anyone else,” he concluded.

India’s T20 World Cup 2026 Squad: Suryakumar Yadav (c), Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma, Sanju Samson (wk), Shivam Dube, Ishan Kishan (wk), Hardik Pandya, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Rinku Singh.

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