Need a quiet achiever, rather than a big name messiah

And so this unnecessary, I suspect unwanted, series continues, alternating between stifling heat and incessant rain. There is much happening...

And so this unnecessary, I suspect unwanted, series continues, alternating between stifling heat and incessant rain. There is much happening around Indian cricket in Bangladesh and not much has to do with the cricket on the field. It is an area of concern when that happens. When the focus shifts away from the game, towards contracts and coaches in this case, a team is ripe for the taking. The coach and the captain, getting along well by all accounts, have a job on their hand merely keeping the attention focused on a Test match.

They need to reach out to a couple of players as well who must be feeling confused, angry, unwanted. Indeed, that is the primary job of a coach and I hope that those in charge of appointing a man to that job search for those qualities as well.

I must confess I have been a bit bewildered by some of the statements appearing in the papers and on news channels (one of which, an exclusive, I know to be patently false!). A lot of names of former cricketers are being thrown around and while that is not bad in itself, the reasons are strange, even poor. The two attributes thrown up most often are that a player has a good record and therefore commands respect. Neither of those is too useful beyond a point and if anything, deserve to be minor qualifications.

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More important, we need to see if the new coach is selfless, always available and possessed of a giving nature because cricketing acumen is taken for granted at this level. These are key qualities of managers and the ability to manage people is always on the top of a wish list of abilities. Great coaches, in any aspect of life, whether a music teacher, a physics teacher or a managing director, are patient people, willing to suffer mistakes if they have spotted potential. They should be willing to spend an off day with a player who is feeling threatened or uncomfortable. Great records do not always impart such qualities to people. They could reside in the same person but possession of one is not even a necessary, let alone sufficient, reason to appoint someone.

Indeed, a quick observation would suggest that a lot of great performers, men with great records and the respect that goes with it, made very poor leaders. And there are enough examples to suggest that great performers are best left to perform in their own, sometimes quixotic, manner without burdening their minds with the travails of lesser people who too are important in the making of a team.

Whoever gets the job has a huge challenge in front of him. Quite apart from the media anointing him as a messiah, for their own headlines rather than out of admiration for him, he will discover that five match winning players are facing a severe mid-life crisis. Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag, Zaheer Khan, Irfan Pathan and Harbhajan Singh should have been the core of this side by now, taking the team, and themselves, to newer heights. Instead, each of them has stagnated, found himself incapable of, or unwilling to take the next step.

Often players slip into a comfort zone, are happy with a certain level of performance because taking it to a next level is too much work, too much of a challenge. It is at that moment that they need a patient hand guiding them, pointing them towards a horizon that is actually within reach. These are not technical corrections but a broadening of the mind. Finding someone to set right a little problem with technique is quite easy. Sitting with someone patiently, clearing the cobwebs in their minds and taking them to another level is far more difficult. We need that kind of man for India’s Test team is moving quickly towards a crisis with no settled opening pair and a team of bowlers who can take twenty wickets difficult to spot.

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This obsession with records is peculiar to the sub-continent. That is one reason, probably the major reason, why our part of the world is the most feudal, the slowest to react. That is also why we are obsessed with individuals rather than systems. And so we need a big name messiah as coach rather than a quiet achiever.

In a peculiar way, I am hoping that the appointment of the new coach is an anti-climax; a contract signed, a press release issued and on with the job. I fear that the more high profile the coach becomes, and the more drama there is surrounding his appointment and his role, the more unproductive it will be.