31 October, 2000

Much discussion, of late, has centered around the question of who should be coaching India.

And a lot of emails we have received ask, who do you think is the best coach? Marsh? Wright? Gaekwad? Jones?

Frankly, my answer is, none of the above. The person who, I believe, should take charge of this Indian team is Bob Woolmer.

Before getting into why, let's look at what a team needs from a coach. Any of you ever hear of a gent name of Gururajan?

No? Quite natural -- other than his immediate circle, it is unlikely that anyone has ever heard of him. And yet, he epitomises, for me, all that a good coach should be.

In Madras, we used to have two leagues -- the TNCA league, and the Chingleput District Cricket Association league.

I used to play in both -- a mere matter of manipulating your residence address, actually, to ensure that you have one address to qualify for the city league and one to qualify for the districts league.

In the CDCA League, there were some very strong teams -- Southern Railway was one, SPIC, led by no less than S Venkatraghavan and boasting a couple of other TN Ranji stars, was another. And yet the champion team at the time was an outfit called Adambakkam Cricket Club, taking its name from the area where we lived.

No stars, but we kept winning each year.

Gururajan was our coach. We used to be a committed outfit. We made our own pitches. Every evening, by three, we would be out there, watering and rolling the pitch and putting up the nets. By 4.30, we had gone through our warm up exercises and were ready to practise.

I don't ever remember Guru standing behind the nets while we batted and bowled, and telling us after every ball, 'Get that front foot further forward... no, don't pull that ball, it is not short enough... don't do this, do that, blah blah blah...'

When you have time and opportunity next, check out Indian coaches at the nets -- this is precisely what they do. Stand there in their floppy hats and dark glasses, behind the batsman in the nets, and go on and on and on.

Why is that wrong?

To answer that, two instances from the Gururajan school of coaching. Once, on a Monday after we had played a match on Sunday, he waved me over, asked me to pick up some spare stumps, and took me to a far corner of the ground. For the rest of the day, he kept chucking the ball at me from some 12 yards, focussing on pitching just short around off. I was made to go back and across, time after time after time, and play the ball. He kept that up for almost two hours. And then talked to me a bit more about the theory involved in going back and across in that fashion.

Another time, he again took me to a corner, this time with one of our quickest bowlers bowling around the wicket from 18 yards away to further enhance the pace. And he made a slight adjustment to my stance, then made me play that line over and over, for the rest of the day.

On both occasions, he had spotted little things about my batting during actual match play. For a while, when I went back and across, my right foot was going too far back, very close to off, with the result that my pickup was a touch cramped, and therefore, my shots lacked punch. That first time, was to correct that deficiency.

The other time, again during a match, he had noticed that when a quick bowler went around the wicket, I was getting into trouble. I had this little blind spot facing that line, and therefore tended to lose sight of the ball for a bit. Guru corrected that by a stance adjustment, then made me play that line till I got used to the new stance.

That is what I want from a coach -- keep an eye on me in actual match play, make note of little problems, then give me the correctives.

In the regular nets, I don't need a coach to nag me. The reason? Simple -- nets, for any decent player, is a chance to work things out in his head. For instance, there was a time when I used to get into a tangle pulling the short ball. The wrists weren't rolling over on the shot, the ball was going in the air, and that in turn made me panic and mishit even worse next time.

So, next time I went into the nets, I told myself that I was going to pull every damn ball irrespective of length, just focus on hitting that shot till my muscle memory kicked in again and I began playing it smoothly, without thought or hesitation.

Had a 'coach' been standing behind me, he would have gone, "no, no, don't pull that ball, that is not the right length/line for the shot." Of course it isn't. And I know that. Just as an international player would know that some balls are not meant to be driven, or pulled, or cut, or whatever. In the nets, though, he is looking to work things out -- a coach should talk to him only if, and when, he asks for advice. The rest of the time, the player should be left free to work things out in his head.

What a coach should really be doing instead is working on the little things he sees during match play -- thus, if a player is consistently seen to be calling wrong, he should be looking at what mistake the player is making, and correcting it.

How? To give you an instance. Some players, when taking a run, always hold the bat in their right hand. That is bad technique, something a coach should be spotting, and correcting. When the ball is driven say wide of midwicket or into the mid on region, and I run with the bat in my right, I can naturally keep my eye on the ball, and therefore am in a position to assess whether a second run is on. For instance, as we start, it might look like a single. The non-striker will have his back to the ball. So it is up to me to keep an eye on the ball going through to mid off or mid on on my shot, and on the fielder, and if I spot a misfield, or see that the fielder is slow to the ball, to immediately alert my partner that two is on.

Similarly, if I have driven out into the covers, or even wide of mid on, through say the wide extra cover region, and if I run with the bat in my right hand, I will have shut down the angle needed for me to see what the ball is doing, and what the possibilities are. That is why I need, even as I set off for my first, to transfer to the left, so that I am open, and I can with a tilt of the head follow the ball even as I race for my first run.

In that context, watch the Indian team perform. It seems such a simple thing, and it makes a huge difference to the number of runs you eventually score. But how many Indians do you see automatically transfer the bat to the correct hand as they set off for their first run? Just four -- Sachin, Jadeja, Robin, Azhar. None of the others do that regularly, not even Rahul and Saurav.

How many coaches have we had in the past four years? I have watched them all during training camps -- and not once, have I seen them simulating match situations in the middle and making the players focus exclusively on running between wickets. Those four batsmen are good by instinct -- but such instinct is rare and for those who don't have it, a coach plays a crucial role in developing the skill.

Let's face it, an international batsman doesn't need to be told how to play the forward defensive shot, or the square cut, or whatever -- that is elementary school level. The minor adjustments in technique are the kind of things good professional coaches work on. And cumulatively, they make the heck of a difference.

Besides this, what a coach is adept in, is planning. A professional one, for instance, would have identified the weaknesses in each opposing player, and worked out ways to capitalise, then briefed his bowlers and his captain about the right line to bowl, the right fields to set. For instance, against Jayasuriya, any coach worth his salt would have, in advance, told his seam bowlers to go round the wicket, focus on angling in tight on off on fullish length since Jaya rarely if ever drives in the mid off region, and shut down his best strokes by having a wide and shortish third man for the edged drive, a point AND coverpoint to cover the slash on the off, and a midwicket standing wide in case he tries to change the angle and hit off to leg. Having decided on line and field, the captain would then give the strategy time to work.

Look at the best teams -- they only make minor field adjustments. Look at us -- after every four, there is frantic hand waving from the captain, major consultations between captain and vice captain and senior players and bowler, and wholesale field adjustments on both sides of the wicket. That speaks of a captain, and a bowler, and a team that has no strategy, but is merely reacting to what is happening on the field of play.

And if that is the case, then what was the coach's contribution to pre-match planning?

One little anecdote illustrates what a good coach will do for a team that, on the evidence, does not have the cricketing nous to think for itself. This one comes from Navjot Singh Sidhu, and relates to the first time he ever faced the South Africans.

As Sidhu tells it: "I was at the non-striker's end, watching Sachin face the opening over. I looked at the field set for him and thought, ah, there are those one or two gaps in the regions where I like to play, I must take advantage. Then a single was taken, and I got strike. I took guard, and while I was doing that, the fielders were moving around, without much fuss, I didn't see any major hand waving from Cronje. I marked my guard and then I looked up and around the field -- and found to my shock that the fielders had automatically moved into different positions, and in the process cut down my best shots."

That was the FIRST time Sidhu was facing the SA bowlers, remember. In contrast, how many times have the Indians been plundered by Jayasuriya? And yet we continue to pitch the leg stump line, and get hammered. And have to readjust after every other ball. And STILL get hammered.

South Africa, then, was coached by Bob Woolmer. A professional, qualified coach who spends all this time either thinking of his team or the opposition, or keeping himself abreast of latest developments in coaching technology. India, here, was coached by an Anshuman Gaekwad (doesn't matter, really, because a Madan Lal, a Kapil Dev, whoever, are merely birds of identical feather) who believe that a coach's job is to go, 'Boys, we need to bowl tight and bat well and field properly and throw in accurately.'

No Indians, please. Our players aren't professional when they play. They are even less so when they coach. Woolmer if I can get my wish list. Or Marsh. Or Wright. They are pros. And we need professionalism -- badly.

Have a lovely day, all; stay safe, stay smiling.

Prem

Mail Cricket Editor