"Embrace the GG mentality" - Nitish Rana shares Gautam Gambhir's brilliant text message after he joined KKR as mentor

Nitish Rana has revealed the message he received from Gautam Gambhir after the latter was confirmed as the mentor of Kolkata Knight Riders before the start of the recently concluded Indian Premier League season.

Having not won the title since 2014, KKR decided to rope in their former captain before IPL 2024. The former India opener had plied his trade as the mentor of Lucknow Super Giants in the previous two seasons. In both the seasons, LSG qualified for the playoffs. Incidentally, they could not make it past the league stage this year.

With KKR, Gautam Gambhir made an instant impact and guided the team to its third IPL title and first since 2014. The Kolkata-based outfit was the most dominant team in the competition as they blew the opponents away en route to the title. Barring the phase during the middle of the competition when they struggled to defend big scores at home, KKR looked almost unbeatable.

They qualified for the playoffs after winning nine of their 12 games while the other two games were washed out. KKR topped the points table for the first time in their history. In the playoffs, they just toyed with Sunrisers Hyderabad and beat them with a similar margin of eight wickets in the qualifier as well as the final.

In the final, the Shreyas Iyer-led side bowled out SRH for just 113 runs before chasing down the total in less than 11 overs. KKR became just the third team after Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings to win the title thrice.

Nitish Rana reveals Gautam Gambhir's message:

Two days after the title victory, Nitish Rana took to X (formerly Twitter) to share a screenshot of the message that he had received from Gautam Gambhir before the start of the season.

The left-handed batsman had congratulated Gambhir on his appointment and in reply, the India legend had messaged: "Thanks Nitish for the msg. This means a lot. Let's create something special. There is no better feeling in sport (than) to stand on a podium and win a trophy. Let's experience that."

Sharing the screenshot of the message, Nitish Rana wrote: "In this era of Mamba Mentality, we're soon all going to embrace the GG Mentality too."

In this era of Mamba Mentality, we're soon all going to embrace the GG Mentality too. #<!---->m<!---->a<!---->n<!---->i<!---->f<!---->e<!---->s<!---->t<!---->a<!---->t<!---->i<!---->o<!---->n #<!---->g<!---->g<!---->m<!---->e<!---->n<!---->t<!---->a<!---->l<!---->i<!---->t<!---->y p<!---->i<!---->c<!---->.<!---->t<!---->w<!---->i<!---->t<!---->t<!---->e<!---->r<!---->.<!---->c<!---->o<!---->m<!---->/<!---->S<!---->A<!---->j<!---->3<!---->X<!---->m<!---->U<!---->e<!---->H<!---->x

??? Nitish Rana (@NitishRana_27) M<!---->a<!---->y<!----> <!---->2<!---->8<!---->,<!----> <!---->2<!---->0<!---->2<!---->4

For those who don't know, Nitish Rana was referring to basketball legend Kobe Bryant with the Mamba Mentality message. Bryant had given himself the nickname 'Black Mamba'.