Talking Sport: Giants of game need clear role, autonomy

There is much euphoria over the appointment of a Cricket Advisory Council in Indian cricket. It is understandable because it is that kind of news even if sometimes the emotions generated suggested that Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman were coming back to bat for India. They aren’t of course but when people who have been committed to Indian cricket and are still young want to play a role, that is generally good news.

I say “young” for a reason. The game is changing faster than ever before; in the way it is being played, in the manner in which players are thinking and, just as important, in their preferences in life. An adviser has to be able to relate to the players he is sitting in judgement over and these three are recent enough. Sometimes the past can be comforting and can look down on the present.

However, far more important than their presence is the role that Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman will be assigned. Mere advisory councils, as all of us have seen, are comfortable and lethargic bodies.

A flight, an allowance, a laugh and a coffee achieves little. At this stage, the intentions seem right and if their role is indeed going to be to pick the next coach that in itself is not a bad beginning.

But each of them need a role, and some autonomy, and if those are granted, much good can come out of this because these are fine people. And so we must wait to see that.

The appointment of the next coach is critical and it is not something that anyone must rush into. India’s experience with coaches has been mixed and while it is true that they neither score a run nor take a wicket, they often determine the mood of the team. As I have often said, the coach has to be tactically astute, be a giver and be genuinely excited by the achievements of others.

It is very different from wading into a tense contest yourself and that is why a stellar career isn’t always the best indicator of coaching success.

Often it can be, as the pharmacists, say contra-indicated because great players are also supreme individualists! But to the attributes that coaches must bring, I would be tempted to add two more. Fit and contemporary in thought. Not only can coaching be tiring because as Gary Kirsten famously said, “you have to give all of yourself” but you must understand how modern players think.

Rahul Dravid’s name has been thrown around, more I suspect by fans than by anyone else. He fulfils almost every criterion except that he has only recently come off a career that involved a lot of time away from home and Dravid loves home and family.

We were together in Adelaide doing commentary for Star Sports during the series against Australia and he was most concerned about getting back in time to attend his son’s school event. That is why asking him only to look after young Indian cricketers at this stage will be a marriage made in heaven. He will not have to travel as much, will have time for the young cricketers and he will mingle easily with them for he carries his mighty accomplishments very lightly.

Just as important, I think he will be able to mould attitudes at the impressionable age most of them will be at. If Dravid is willing, Indian cricket need look no further.

With the coach of the senior team though, you need to look at a couple of other factors. With Dhoni at the tail-end of his leadership, the person chosen must complement Virat Kohli, take as much of the load off him as possible because while his intensity is his great strength, I sometimes fear it might exhaust Kohli who seems to approach every ball like it is the last punch in a bout.

Shastri will fit like a glove 

Having known him so well as a colleague I can see why Ravi Shastri will be good at it. It is something I had actually suggested to him long before this assignment actually came up because I thought he would be good at deflecting a lot of the pressure off a young bunch. There were two reasons for my thought. The first was how as a player he squeezed every inch of his ability out of himself through his attitude to the game. He backed himself and produced a career few players with his natural skills would have. Then, for one season after he had retired, he took a bunch of kids in the Mumbai team and won a Ranji Trophy with them.

Through the tour of Australia and the World Cup I could actually see Ravi insulating a lot of the players and I am not surprised at all that players like Kohli and Suresh Raina have said what they have. Being an India player, in our current media environment, is more stressful than it needs to be and a degree of insulation is actually good.

Whether he wants to do it full time I don’t know for this is a full time job. And if he has to be a Team Director with a coach under him than the BCCI needs to define what the Advisory Council does because you can’t have too many people in the same space. The immediate challenge before Indian cricket is to win in Bangladesh as much as it is to put the right people in right places for bigger battles ahead.