‘Greg should have been around for longer’

Webster talks about how players don’t have bosom buddies to perform as a team on the field. He concedes that expectations of one billion fans can put pressure on the very best in the game and also adds that Sachin Tendulkar has a few more years of cricket in him.

On Chappell, he says the Aussie coach should have stayed on for a couple more years.

Ask him for a solution to the present chaos, and he talks about looking for a pattern. “Every group of people has its strengths and weaknesses. We need to identify the strengths and improve them. Identify the weakness and correct them. The weaknesses also come in patterns. If you go back to 20 years in your cricket you will see certain things repeating themselves. This is what people in charge need to change,” he says.

He is quite updated with India’s on-field Bangladesh-triggered disaster, and has several queries about the present day off-the-field chaos. The mind guru—a professional solution provider, whose clientele includes sporting greats like Tiger Woods, Greg Norman and Brian Lara—says a situation has arisen in which “the best coach I have ever come across” walked away from an “immensely talented team that is the most pressurised in the world.”

The brilliantly glowing afternoon sun serves as a perfect analogy. “You might come to Grenada and not see the sun, if it is blocked by dark clouds. Then if you want the sun, you don’t make another one and put it in front of the clouds. All you have to do is wait for the dark clouds to go away. “The question is, what are these dark clouds? The authorities have to identify them and try to remove them,” he says.

Webster is non-committal about identifying them himself because he says his interaction with the Indian team was too brief to make judgments. But he isn’t averse to giving solutions to the problems one points out.

Ask him if a team with factions and serious differences can deliver on field and he nods his head. “In teams you will always have disagreements, differences of opinion. And you are going to have conflicts. In America they say, if you have a marriage and you don’t have the occasional conflict, the marriage doesn’t last. Conflict is very important if it is constructive and this energises the group,” he says.

But Webster stresses that the “the problem with conflict is, 8 out of 10 times it is destructive, where you have people forgetting the objective of the team. Sometimes they put their personal agendas before those of the team.”

He, though, concedes that pressure at times becomes too much, even for the greatest of players. “If you disappoint the billion fans who support you, they can be your most vicious critics. It is a double-edged sword,” he reveals.

Speaking about the Indian players he says: “I think the soil is very fertile. The potential of change is there. If certain attitudes, certain ways of thinking, certain mental skills are changed about the game, you will have guys with the right attitude. They will become fitter, they will want to train harder, and they will pay more attention to technique. I know people are very hard at them at the moment, but I tell you that the potential is there.”

He rarely gives specific assessment about individuals, but when it comes to coach Chappell he gives his views. “I am very impressed with his all-round knowledge of the game. But he is an Australian, and they are very direct. That’s the way he has been brought up. He calls a spade a spade. But I am a bit disappointed he didn’t continue for another couple of years, because you would have seen the results of his efforts.

“That is because I don’t care who you are, but a coach cannot achieve much in two years. And especially with a team that is in transition. And with a little bit of infighting and political battles; it becomes very difficult.”

Giving an example of the Aussie coach of the West Indian team Bennett King, Webster points out how he is at a distinct disadvantage.

Understanding the culture of the people is critical. That is the belief in their priorities, their way of doing things and their thinking. We have in the Caribbean an Australian coach who didn’t play any cricket or has any experience of cricket at all. He had a little bit of success in Australia with Queensland and what he wanted to do was to transplant Queensland’s Australian culture into the West Indies and it was a total disaster. I mean the transplanting of the Queensland culture in Victoria can be difficult. “One of the key jobs of the coach is to motivate the players and get the best out of them, give them the confidence and the self belief and they can go on and do anything. If he doesn’t understand the way they think, if he doesn’t understand their religion and culture, he is at a tremendous disadvantage,” he said.