India vs Australia: When the supporting cast helped stars steal show

So as speculated, India hasn’t suddenly stumbled upon some success mantra that changed them overnight. While on the road for more than four months now, no one has been caught napping on the wheel. Duncan Fletcher and Ravi Shastri, the face of Team India’s coaching staff, have taken the big calls but these are augmented by smaller decisions by men of lesser authority — more of that later — and individual initiatives have seen India not just stop the free-fall but also helped blast them off to a higher orbit. So when a senior journalist asked Rohit Sharma about the role of physios Nitin Patel and Amit Shah, trainer Sudarshan and masseur Ramesh Mane in the team’s turnaround, it brought a smile to the Indian opener’s face. He seemed genuinely pleased to give the answer.

“This has been the most important question. People laud players and the coaching staff for good performances but no one knows what goes on behind the scenes. The four people [Sudarshan, Nitin Patel, Mane Kaka, Amit Shah] have performed very important roles.” He wasn’t stopping. “Since the day we landed [in Australia], they have been working hard. Playing cricket continuously for four months is not easy, especially for fast bowlers. These men have made sure that we could all step on to the field. They’ve put in a lot of effort.”They have also gone beyond their call of duty. So you could see the team computer analyst giving throw downs to batsmen, the physio fetching stray balls during fielding practice and, of course, Mane Kaka putting up ‘self help’ posters and playing soothing numbers in dressing rooms.

Several times in the tournament, Dhoni has been asked about the metamorphosis of his team. How have they gone from worse to best. Once he had revealed how they made the tri-series their lab. They would experiment, without getting too worried about results. So anyone with the slightest niggle would be rested and he would use the time away from the game to understand the local conditions better.

Australian captain Michael Clarke has seen this happen. “Indians have played so much cricket in Australia. They’ve worked out how to take wickets. They’ve worked out how to score runs, and they’ve shown that through this tournament. I think MS Dhoni deserves a lot of credit for the way he’s captained his team especially after being defeated in the Test series and the tri-series to be able to turn things around.”

One of the most noticeable changes has been the performance of India’s pacers, with Mohammad Shami turning into a matured pace spearhead from an erratic rookie. Those who watched Shami closely for the last few years would often get frustrated by the bowler’s inconsistency. Typically, he would be a terror at nets but toothless in games. During the England tour last year, under bowling coach Joe Dawes, he once even lost the rhythm on his run-up.

In the period between the tri-series and World Cup, Shami saw the light. Bowling coach Bharath Arun, another lesser-known support staff, shepherded the boy with potential to bowl the length. Analysis had showed Shami had a tendency to bowl a boundary-ball first up, in all his spells. The numbers were staggering, about 80 per cent of the times Shami wouldn’t really hit the new spell running. After working with coaches, it was decided that the Bengal pacer would stick to the length that Umesh Yadav bowls. Yadav’s success in the practice game was enough to convince Shami. The rest is history in the making.