Womanly Tales

Yesterday India lost to England in the T20 world cup hosted in the UK. My odds were with the English not because they were a talented squad [hardly] or that they are favorites to win [not!]. Instead it had to do with me being a fan of Indian cricket. There are some things that are just not fair expectations of the Indian national cricket squad and if you’re not sure what they are – here’s my list accumulated over years of watching them ‘perform’.
Do NOT expect the Indian cricketeers to
- play short deliveries. It’s a skill gap that most players and team management have blatently ignored and worked around for [believe it or not] at least two decades now. Granted, we might have the odd player that has this skill but give him a year or two in the national squad and he’ll quickly erase any memory of ever having this skill to begin with.
- perform to potential under pressure: Indians as a result of years of mis-appropriated government funds have learnt to build multiple buffers to counter poverty and social/economic discrimination. These buffers are created by being over-protective and over-indulgent with one another. This is the same for our cricketeers. They are pampered, cosseted and royally spoilt and in such conditions, and only such conditions come out and display some talent. But it’s ok – ma ki laal jo tehre! So put a little pressure, push them up against a wall and they crumble. Talent goes out the window and what is on display is best represented yesterday by Suresh Raina who all but collapsed against a Sidebottom delivery!
- Translate talent into consistent execution: This is perhaps the most fundamental expecation NOT to have about Indian cricketeers. They just don’t co-relate talent to consistent execution. Nope, consistent execution is another word for practice and that’s boring, like rote learning. Instead talent is best executed when erratic or spontaneous. That’s why most Indian batsmen in the national squad are always ‘out of form’. That’s because they can’t be expected to bring their talent to the game each time they play. That’s like close to an absurdity to their mental grasp of the term ‘talent’. It’s also the way they over-indulge and pamper one another — It’s ok that you didn’t perform this match or this year even – we know you have talent.
- Back performers against players: The Indian cricketing squad is akin to a mafia outfit in some peculiar ways. Everybody backs the other player because everyone is consistently out of form – if not this game or season, then surely next season. Stick together at any cost, that’s the mantra. In their minds perhaps they cannot seperate performers from players. So encouragement is given freely and when faced against public opinion or the media, they all come together as one unit. Breaking that unity is close to sacrilege. It’s not just players here right — it’s the BCCI and the board too. They have long lost the ability to distinguish performers from players.

OK – so what can we do about this? I have a few ideas. I haven’t checked the Indian media to look at the ‘backlash’ of having lost to England yesterday because I think it’ll be quite crazy out there. Each media channel will be hosting a panel of ‘experts’ and there will be a lot of player bashing happening. Were I to join the fray I’d probably do some player bashing myself and my pick from this tournament will be the captain, one batsman – Gambhir and one bowler – Sharma.
However I am not going to go down that path because it’s futile. The core problem is not about our individual players – it’s really about our talent management environment. Clearly we love our cricket and we have produced some of the most talented players in the world. We share this legacy of talent with our sub-continent neighbours Pakistan and Sri Lanka. So what’s wrong then? Talent is not enough. We need to create a learning environment that nurtures the best talent we’ve got. That’s where the BCCI has failed miserably. So instead of going into a detail analysis of why & how they failed – let me instead put forth an idea to move us forward:
The premise of my idea is this: There is a need to go back to the basics of learning and change the learning environment in decisive ways such that players who make it to the natural squad are truly world champions.
How do we change the learning environment?
- Hire Shane Warne as a lead of a talent scouting team that is made up of 5 reps each from all the states as well as 3 advisory positions that can be filled on a rotational basis by coaches from around the world.
– Have this team define the core skills of a world class champion and build a list of actions to address these skills
– For eg: 5 out of 10 pitches of all state sponsored cricketing grounds including big stadiums to be treated to help players build skills in key gap areas. Eg: Short deliveries
– What will this do? We will start putting the pressure needed on all our players from the national squad down to the freshers to perform against these conditions that we believe define a world champion.
– Every IPL season have Shane Warne float a team of players selected by his team that will compete with the rest of the teams. The reward will be selection in the national squad.
– Manage the team to build a funding channel to local schools where selected ‘talent’ can be nurtured and brought up to standard.
– Provide all ex-national team veterans [srikkanth, gavaskar, etc] the opportunity to spend 2 – 4 weeks coaching time with these local talent pools.
– All members of the selection board need to spend at least 4 weeks every three months stationed in one of the four cricket zones, observing and learning from these local talent pools.
– All members of the national squad to spend 4 weeks in a year with their respective cricket zone working with the local talent pools.
– Back up training with experience time. Give our young chaps priority seats in the national squads and IPL squads.
– Have a retirement cut off age of 35 years. No player however big or small can decide when they quit.
– Put a process in place to transition Veteran cricketeers [the likes of Sachin, Dravid etc] in national squads to play charity tournaments to raise funds for social causes and hence soft-retire them. We can’t have them filling in slots on test and 50-50 teams beyond the age of 35. Gilchrist – a phenomenal player is retired and when he performs in IPL dedicates his sixes to a charity. I’d pay to watch Sachin play in a charity match and also be reassured to know that he’s not keeping the young chaps from developing key skills via experience.
– Every two years evaluate if the 35 year cut off mark is too high and we might want to lower it to 32 / 33.