‘I have had more advice as a coach than I ever had as a selector or player’

• We got to the World Cup semifinal last year, we’ve done brilliant Test cricket, and in fact we’re the only team to have run Australia very close. What’s been lacking, why has India been not able to bridge the narrow gap with Australia?

It was not a narrow gap between anyone and Australia. Back in the mid-80s Australia went through a lean period and that was the birth of what we see now. The administration, the selectors, everybody involved with cricket in Australia just sat down and said, ‘Ok, the West Indies are dominating, we need to work out how to reach that level and go beyond’. The planning that went in at that stage was an important part of what we see today. I don’t see anyone else in world cricket who has done that. Perhaps England has tried, in recent times, to bridge that gap.

• Why has India not had two years in its history when it dominated world cricket, like Australia, or the West Indies, or even England in the past?

I think it’s more than just physical talent that has allowed Australia and West Indies before them to dominate cricket. The West Indians had a very powerful pace quartet, a very powerful batting side, and probably the best fielding side that I have ever seen in cricket. But there was the desire, there was the hunger, there was the need for them to play well, and I think that’s what we see with the Australian team in the last 15 years, there’s been desperation to play well. To be a champion team takes more than just putting 11 good players on the field and hoping that they are going to play well. There is a lot more to it, there is a lot of hard work that goes in behind the scenes, there is a lot of hard work that goes in the preparations, and then in the execution. And it’s day in, day out. I don’t think many people realise just how hard it is to be on top for that length of time.

• This is something that intrigues me, how are India able to raise their game against Australia? Even when they are down in the dumps, they somehow raise themselves against Australia, not just at home, but also in Australia.

There was a series in Australia a couple of years ago, an excellent series. There were some very good individual performances, but it was also a very good team performance. I think a part of that was the planning and preparations of John Wright and Saurav Ganguly, who played a big part in that. Saurav’s vision for what he wanted from that team was also an important part.

• What is it that he wanted, what agenda did he set for the team and what did he get right? He got something right.

Yeah, he wanted India to do well, he wanted India to do better overseas than ever before and I think I felt that there was vulnerability about Australia then that could be exploited.

• We really should have won at Sydney.

They probably should have won that series. Yes, the Sydney Test match was wonderful, it was there to be won and they couldn’t quite finish it off.

• You find this hunger, this desperation in flashes, and then you find this team performing so inconsistently. It goes low down, it loses to Sri Lanka, it does badly against Pakistan, it struggles against Zimbabwe. Why such scratchy performances?

Well, very few people realise just how hard it is to mentally as well as physically keep backing up day after day and putting in a premier performance. And that’s why I think the strength of the Australian team is not so much about the stars of that team, but what I would call the second-tier players, the guys who are not the superstars of the team, but keep putting in day after day. Somebody puts their hand up when one or two or three of their top players maybe goes through a lean patch or has a bad game. Now people like Justin Langer, Justin Langer is an unsung hero in the Australian team, Damien Martyn, Kasprowich was the prime example.

• Martyn won the series for you, while you were in Australia, now you are ours.

That’s right.

• He won that series for Australia. In fact, but for him, Australia would have lost the series at Chennai.

I think that’s the key to the success of the Australian team. There is a uniformity in effort that is critical to their performance, and there is a strength and a unity in the Australian teams, Australian sporting teams, forget about the Australian cricket team, that is rarely duplicated anywhere else in the world.

• Australia is a great sporting nation.

Well, I think that is more about the environment, the culture of sport in Australia.

• I believe so much so that they are even trying to crack baseball now. I believe your son is a baseball star.

That’s right.

• The younger one.

The youngest one plays baseball and he chose baseball over a number of sports that he could have played, but baseball has been around. I play baseball, Ian (Chappell) actually played baseball before he represented Australia for cricket. So you know baseball has been around for a long time, our grandfather played a lot of baseball and my father played baseball, so that’s also a part of our sporting heritage.

• I believe it was your grandfather who advised Australian cricketers to stand up to Bodyline, and to take the blows on their body, wasn’t it?

Yes, he played in that series. He captained Australia in a few Test matches back in the 1930s, and was known for his fighting spirit, I think that’s a part of our generic inheritance.

• You are a sporting superpower, do you think that is something the Indian teams lack?

I am not suggesting that this Indian team doesn’t have fighting spirit when you can name half-a-dozen guys who are premier cricketers, not only in this era, but also in the history of the game. But it’s hard to do it day in, day out, and that’s the key to being a champion team. I think most teams have been able to have success in a series, maybe for two or three series, but to be able to stretch that out for five years is quite demanding.

• You talked about how the second-tier players perform for Australia. Do you think that’s the problem with India, that the stars don’t do enough to win the match, and the second tier doesn’t feel important enough, or is not taken seriously enough to deliver?

I keep hearing this wherever I go, that they don’t have the fighting spirit, they can’t win matches, they can’t do this, they can’t do that. They have actually done a lot of good things.

• As I said, they made the finals of the World Cup, they beat Australia in India when they were at the peak under Steve Waugh, they nearly beat Australia in Australia, they had a reasonably good series, and it could have been drawn in India. But besides that, if you look at the rankings, No.7 in one-day cricket, they never quite reached the ranking they should have had. So there is a great lack of consistency. We have more megastars than anybody.

I think most of the megastars have been in batting. To win matches, you have to bowl teams out, especially in Test matches, you have to get 20 wickets to win the match. So I think this Australian team is being built very much around McGrath and Warne, with some very good support from Gillespie. Kasprowich has played a very important part in the matches that he has played, not least in this part of the world, in India, he has done very well. You got to get 20 wickets. The other aspect of it is fielding, and I suppose if you want to look at an area that India can make a big difference, it is in fielding. Catching, run-outs, saving runs, that stuff is very important.

• We have found that not only does India concede the most number of runs during the middle overs against the other teams, but they also have the least number of run-outs. A run-out is one of the most important modes of dismissal in a one-day match and India gets very few run-outs.

Well, I guess you have identified a few things that underscore what it takes to be a really successful team. Champion teams aren’t always necessarily full of champions. They are the teams that do the basics very well. They do the ordinary things extraordinarily well and that’s what makes the champion team. The thing that surprised me, the thing that impressed me most about this Australian team is that you would think their position would have bred some sort of complacency. That they would have had some bad games, some bad series, and got beaten or pushed around by teams that are much lesser than themselves. But they haven’t been, and I think that’s the most impressive thing about them.

• What do you subscribe to, besides the Australian fighting spirit?

I think commitment to each other and commitment to being a good team, the fact that they have committed to do the basic things, to keep working hard, it takes a lot of effort. It’s one thing to put the physical effort in, but the mental effort is critical to the whole thing, you cannot afford a day off.

• So now is fielding going to be the main area of focus? You cannot win one-day cricket, unless you can get run-outs, unless you stop singles in the middle overs.

You need not necessarily make a lot of run-outs, but you certainly have to make runs hard to come by.

• This is a country of one billion cricket coaches. You’ve got competition. Anyone you meet, on a flight, on the street, in a hotel, they will give you advice.

Don’t worry, I recognise that, I knew when I became a selector in Australia after my retirement. I got more advice as a selector than I ever got as a player, and I have had more advice as a coach than I ever had as a selector.

• You know, you have pointed out one area of weakness, which is choking singles and as a result getting run-out, basically making it difficult for the other team to score runs in easy overs, when your main bowlers are resting. Indian cricket also suffers from this great fascination for hitting fours and sixes.

Well, I guess again its not fours and sixes that win one-day games. It’s just ones and twos. And if you look at the teams that do well, they get the highest percentages of ones and twos, so I think a change of accentuation is something that we need to look at with Indian cricket, which is a one-day game. I think again coming back to do the basic things which I call ‘‘out cricket’’, like running between the wickets, and fielding, are very important aspects of the game, other than bowling and batting.

• We find in India our batsmen come out to bat, and you are cheering a few fours and sixes, and you see 107 for no loss, 107 for one, sometimes in 20 overs, sometimes in 15 overs. And then suddenly the game loses steam; we do not have anything in the last 10 overs. So we do poorly in the middle overs and we do poorly in the last 10. Which means unless we get a real flyer in the first 15 overs, we are in trouble. That’s why we cannot chase big scores.

Well, I beg to differ with you. I suspect it’s that attitude that causes the problem. We talk about needing a flyer in the first 15 overs. In fact, what you need is a very solid 15 overs. Looking for boundaries is a negative outlook and you miss out on a lot of scoring opportunities. I think you will find, if you look at the losing scores, forget about which team it is, if you look at the losing scores, or compare them with the winning scores, it’s the team which gets the most ones and twos, it’s the team that builds the most partnerships.

• Or is it the team that scores the most off deliveries?

Not necessarily, but generally yes, that is the case. I mean, you will be surprised at how many balls are not scored off, in a one-day game. I mean, there are very few maiden overs, but the non-scoring balls would make up more than half of the overs that are bowled, so there is a lot of scope to score more runs.

• Does your analysis show that India lets go of many such deliveries?

In the one-day games they do, there is a lot of scope for scoring more runs without actually hitting a lot of boundaries, without going for big shots which are high risk shots.

• That was the problem with the last series against Pakistan. We should not have lost the match.

Well, that’s probably true. The difference between the two teams was that Pakistan did the basic things much better in the last half of that one-day series, not least running between the wickets and taking those runs in the middle overs when the runs were there to be taken. They did that very well. There is no doubt, I have seen India play very well in one-day cricket and do those things well, but it’s a commitment to do it day after day. That’s what is required to make a champion team.

• But that’s what surprised us, because we thought India had licked that problem, and suddenly they seemed to lose their way and go back to bad habits.

Again, that’s the difficulty of being succesful for a long period of time, once you slip a little bit, stop doing those basic things, suddenly you have given the advantage to the opposition.

• So what do you think is the biggest challenge as you settle down to fix this team?

There is a whole range of problems, but the biggest challenge is selling the vision and the commitment to excellence that I have talked about. If we are to have a champion team, then we have to have that commitment to excellence and we have to do the basic things that we have been talking about.

• When I look at this team, I find that there is a lot of the past, there is a lot of the present, but there is not a lot of the future. If you look at the next World Cup, a lot of these players, who automatically select themselves in the one-day team or even in the Test team, are not going to be around three to four years from now. They may not be around, at least to play a full season.

I have not been around long enough to say about where the future is, but obviously any good team is always building on its strength, the Australian team has done well over the last 15 years.

• But they are struggling now, their fast bowlers are ageing, no?

They are at the moment, and that’s the danger sign for Australia. I mean some of their key players might not be around for the 2007 World Cup. But the Australian selectors have done very well to keep re-energising the team and to keep that competition going.

• But the Australian bench does not look good anymore.

I would say that they are looking the most vulnerable now for some time.

• And have you had the time to study the Indian bench?

Not really, no, I have been with the fast bowlers the last week or so, the other guys who arrived now are doing their conditioning, their fitness works.

• We talked about this a little earlier, but you know, India’s big weakness is also in its bowling department. When we go to a situation like Australia where pitches are a little more sporting, the bowlers do a little better. But in India they struggle to get the other team out. There is a persistent problem of letting the tails wag—Australians have done it, England has done it, Pakistan has done it against us.

That is the hallmark of good teams where the tailenders get runs.

• They do it against India all the time.

Well, you have noticed it against India, but I have seen them do it against other teams as well and it’s a mark of a good team. It’s a part of the process of being a good team, the batsmen should be able to bowl a little bit, bowlers should be able to bat a little, specially when it is required. There is no use of getting runs when everyone else is getting runs, it’s getting runs when runs are hard to come by, that extra bit of effort, that extra bit of fight is what would make the difference. An extra 30 runs, I can remember two or three Test matches that I have played in, being won by the last partnership in our innings.

• We fare rather badly in that area. Nos 8, 9, 10 and 11 have not been producing enough and until recently, neither has the wicket-keeper.

They are all important parts of cricket. I don’t want to stand here and talk about all that is negative about Indian cricket, because there are a lot of positives, a lot of talent that is available.

• But there are a lot of performances in the last five years. Greg, let me take you back to your playing days again a little bit. You didn’t play much against India, but for the one series in ’81. Do you have any particular memories of that Melbourne match, is that the match you want to remember?

Yes, I certainly do have memories of that Test match. It was a great Test match, it was probably one of the more difficult wickets in the second half of the innings.

• Vishwanath from Bangalore hit a 100 in that match.

I think Sunny got a 70 in that match.

• That’s when he got angry and nearly walked off.

In fact he had to walk out, for he was out.

• Did you and Sunny ever talk about this later?

No, not really. I never found the need to talk about it later, it was just one of those things that happened when we all had days where things haven’t gone our way and we have done things which we look back on and regret.

• How do you rate Kapil Dev compared to other fast bowlers. We know that he was not as fast.

Well, if you liken him to Glenn McGrath, who is one of the fastest bowlers not only of his era, but also of all times, it’s not about bowling fast, it’s about putting the ball in the area that the batsmen least wants it, and Kapil did that. I define him as an old-fashioned outswing bowler.

• And the forgettable incident of your time, the underarm ball?

An equally poor decision on my behalf, and that kind of brought about some frustration and a whole range of issues. It had very little to do with the game going on that day.

• But you do regret it?

Absolutely, I regret it.