A war of words emerged between Indian cricket team head coach Gautam Gambhir and Australia great Ricky Ponting after the latter criticised Virat Kohli’s form and questioned his place in the Test team. When Gambhir was asked about his views on Ponting’s comments in the press conference, he lost his calm and asked the Australia great to only focus on his team. However, Gambhir’s comments have not gone down well with some former cricketers, including ex-England captain Michael Vaughan, who took a subtle swipe at the India head coach.

During a discussion on a podcast, Vaughan called Gambhir a ‘spicy’ coach while also suggesting that he doesn’t quite agree with the India coach’s philosophy, barring foreign pundits from commenting on his team.

“I am going to like Gautam Gambhir as coach because he is spicy. I think he is going to have to learn that sometimes, in the leadership position that he is in, play the game a little bit,” said Vaughan on the Club Prairie Fire podcast during a chat with Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist.

“Don’t just buy every comment. Because, by the way, we are all going to be commenting about his team very shortly. And I never thought that the rule of punditry is that you can only have a comment on the team that you played for. If that is the rule of punditry well, Haydos you have spent half your life in India so that’s your job. I have got to get on a plane and go back to Manchester tomorrow morning.

“So I don’t quite agree with Gautam. But I do like a bit of spice and I like the fact that he is going to be very prickly. Over the course of the next few weeks I don’t think it’s going to be easy for his team. I don’t think they are going to win every game, they are going to lose games and it will be very interesting to see how he deals with that negative side of team performance.”

As the Border-Gavaskar Trophy progresses, more such verbal battles are expected to take place between Gambhir and retired cricketers who will be working on the series as pundits.