|| India Correspondent ||

Former Kolkata Knight Riders’ captain Dinesh Karthik handing over the responsibility to Eoin Morgan mid-season to concentrate on his batting. While that didn’t go well with many, another former KKR Gautam Gambhir too belongs to that list. Having led KKR to two IPL trophies, Gambhir said that he too faced rough patches in his batting but explained that it was captaincy that helped him to deal with that.

Meanwhile, Karthik’s decision didn’t help him at as his form has not improved a bit as both KKR and Karthik has been going through a tough season as well.

“It just shows the mindset. You left captaincy because you wanted to concentrate on batting, but then it hasn’t worked, so probably sometimes it’s good when you take up responsibilities," Gambhir told cricket.com. "What I’ve realized when I was through a worse phase in 2014. I got three ducks in a row when we started the tournament. It was captaincy that helped me that I could get back into form.”

"The reason why because when I was not batting, I was thinking about how to make the team win through my captaincy and the decision making. But when you’re not captaining, you’re thinking even more about your batting," he further said.

Karthik so far has managed to score only 169 runs from 13 innings at a strike rate of above 127. KKR, meanwhile have 12 points from 13 matches. Even if they win their final game against Rajasthan Royals on Sunday, there’s no guarantee of qualifying for the playoffs due to their poor Net Run Rate.