Nitish Kumar Reddy reflects about how he was told by head coach to ‘Take a bullet for Country’ during his Test debut

Nitish Kumar Reddy spoke about his thoughts on the reputation of Perth giving an upper hand to fast bowlers which made him nervous before his Test debut against Australia. However, all this nervousness disappeared when he remembered about the advice he got from head coach Gautam Gambhir – face the bowlers if “you are taking a bullet for the country”.

Nitish made impressive numbers of 41 off 59 balls which left a massive impression of respect for India’s overall poor batting, which led to India posting a mere total of 150 in their first innings.

“I heard a lot about the Perth wicket. There was a bit of nervousness. It was in the back of my mind that everyone was talking about the bounce on Perth wicket. But then I remembered the chat I had with Gautam sir after our last practice session,” Nitish said in the post-day conference.

“He was mentioning that ‘when you get a bouncer, take it on your shoulder. It was like taking a bullet for your country’. That just boosted me. When he said that I felt that I needed to take the bullet for the country. That’s the best thing I have heard from Gautam sir,” he added.

The 21-year-old revealed that he was informed about his day just a day ahead of the first Test, but he managed to gather himself with a nice dinner and a cycling round in the evening.

“We got to know (him and pacer Harshit Rana) about our debut just one day ago, and we were excited. We were having dinner and we were keeping calm as last week. We did not want to take too much pressure. We had a cycle ride as well last evening, so that was good.” he said.

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