'India A series are about giving opportunities, not results'

You played international cricket for 16 years and first-class for more than 20. What was it like being coach and not playing?
I've done it for the last two years at Rajasthan Royals. I know the role as mentor, and Paddy Upton is our head coach. We share a lot of responsibilities and duties. So I have been doing bits of coaching at Royals for two months through the IPL, which is a pretty hectic time. I have played a lot of international cricket and seen a lot of coaches operate, how they work and what they do. It is different, but it didn't come as a huge surprise or anything hugely different.

What kind of a coach are you?
I'm still learning about coaching and dealing with players - what kind of messages to give through, when is the time to intervene, what is a good way to intervene, should you intervene now or not, what is best for a player in the given situation.

One of the things at the India A level, which made it comfortable for me, was that there is not a lot of technical coaching that needs to be done. A lot of the boys have had incredible Ranji seasons. You only get picked if you have had a lot of success. So you have a method that works for you and it is just a matter of performing at a higher level. The time frame is really short.

It is about getting people match-ready and providing them an environment that allows them to play to their best potential and not intervening too much or getting into the technical side of things. You do have a few conversations with people on the specific things you might notice, but you are not really looking to make too many changes and trying to change people's techniques or actions or grips. I don't think you need to do that at this level.

One of the things you mentioned when you took over as coach was that you see this as a feeder programme for the senior team. Is there a danger that guys will focus on individual performances to get noticed?
It is natural to think ahead and look at India spots and recognise that runs and wickets and performances are going to get you noticed. You just have to find the right balance. I have mentioned to them that as much as we want to perform individually, it is about the team performing well. I think the selectors notice when players are playing for the team and not putting themselves ahead of the team. If you score runs as an individual, it benefits the team as well. It's just a question of balancing it out. I don't think it was much of an issue.

It can be more of an issue in one-day cricket than the four-day format, because in four days there is enough time for enough people to show their talent. Sometimes, due to the nature of one-day cricket, it can happen at times. But I did not experience that in this series at all. Everyone who was a part of the India A side gave as much as they could to the team while focusing on their individual performances.

India A lost to Australia A, but won against South Africa A, and won the tri-series as well. Where is Indian cricket talent-wise?
These series are not only about results. I don't think you can say that we want to win every single A series. It is more about giving the players who have come to this level an opportunity to perform, and that is what we tried to do. Even in the one-day series, I tried to make sure that everyone got an opportunity to play. Some got just one game, but that is the bigger idea.

People have earned the right to come here by performing really well and you must try to give them an opportunity to showcase their talent at a higher level. If you don't give someone an opportunity, he has to go back to Ranji Trophy and score 800 runs or take 40 wickets in a season. That's not fair. If you give someone an opportunity and he scores runs, he remains in the selector's eyeline. He has to still go back to Ranji Trophy and score runs, but he is noticed now, has gone up a level, and is a step closer to breaking into the Indian team if an opportunity arises.

That is exactly what happened with Karun Nair.
It was a nice thing to see. There were two opportunities that opened up in the Indian side and the selectors picked Nair and Naman Ojha, who are both part of the India A set-up. I think that is a greater message than anything I could say. The selectors start picking players into the national side and it is a great incentive for the boys to do well. Then it is an incentive for us to give them the opportunities as well. Winning and losing is nice, as the results are going to be there, but for me the series was more about ensuring that everyone got an opportunity to show their skills.

We have just seen an Ashes series where none of the matches have gone past four days. Do you see defensive batting going out in the modern game and batting being equated with just run-scoring?
Batting has always been and should be about scoring runs. You bat because you want to score runs. People do it differently. You can't play the same way in different conditions. The really successful players are the ones who learn to adapt and not play in the same way on a flat deck and a green seamer or a square turner. Having that all-round game to adapt and succeed in different conditions and consistently against different challenges and kinds of bowling is the real thing and the good players will find a way to do it.

You don't see 50 for 1 at the end of the first session these days. It's either 75 for no loss or 50 for 4.
I enjoy the fact that people are playing positively. It is terrific for the game. When conditions get difficult, learning how to battle through it for a couple of hours in the morning session and setting up a Test match over five days is as important as scoring quickly. It is just about finding the balance as Test wickets are good nowadays and you generally find wickets loaded in favour of batsmen. Eighty per cent of the time you could play that way, but it's that 20% when you have to find a way to get through seaming and swinging conditions to set up a Test match.

You have had a chance to look at some young spinners. Axar Patel did very well for India A. But is that also an area where the talent pool is not the same as when you were playing?
I heard that the quality of spin is not that good when I took over the job. From talking to a lot of domestic coaches and people who know the domestic scene well, there isn't as big a pool of quality spinners as there was ten or 15 years ago. India A had a couple of experienced spinners in Amit Mishra and Pragyan Ojha, and it was good to see them coming back.

But against South Africa, we had a young group of spinners who are in their early 20s: Jayant Yadav, Axar, Baba Aparajith and Karn Sharma have all got potential and they are getting there. They are not a finished product by any stretch of the imagination but they are learning and there is talent there. There are not as many spinners around but the top five to six definitely have potential if they keep improving. A lot of work needs to be done by them and the coaches around them to help them take that leap into international cricket.

Pitches get talked about a lot in India. There is an instruction from the board about having a certain amount of grass on every pitch in the country. Having now seen the A set-up and the players up close, is there a way you would like pitches in India to behave?
I was hoping that we got pitches with pace and bounce for the A series as it would have been a great challenge for a lot of our young batsmen to come up against the Australian and South African fast bowlers. But unfortunately it didn't pan out that way for a variety of reasons. I think that is a big challenge in India.

A lot of the wickets, especially the ones at the main Test grounds, are getting overused and groundsmen aren't able to produce the kind of wickets that we would all like cricket to be played on. While you don't want wickets which make a 125kph bowler look unplayable, you also don't want to go the other extreme and prepare rank turners and make anyone who bowls darts also be able to spin the ball.

It is about finding that balance and it is not easy. The groundsmen are trying their best, and one of the things I will say after interacting with a lot of them is that they care as much about cricket as we do and they are desperately trying to provide good surfaces. It doesn't always work out as planned because of the pressures they are under but they are trying to do a job.

The kind of wickets we would like to see are wickets that have bounce and that start spinning as the game goes on, giving everyone an even chance. You want the spinners to come into the game on the second day at some stage and you want bounce throughout.

Towards the end, the [first Test] wicket at Wayanad spun a lot, but the second [Test] wicket against South Africa at Wayanad had good bounce. That would be the ideal scenario, as long as it didn't break up as much as it did. Unfortunately towards the end of the third day and fourth day, it just started spinning square, which is not ideal.

One of the things with A cricket is that senior players who have been part of the national side come back when they are dropped or need practice. We saw Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli play for India A recently. What is your method with these established Test players? Pujara mentioned a conversation he had with you when he made that hundred recently. Is your approach different towards them to say someone who is trying to make the cut?
It is. You have to treat each player as an individual and they are at unique stages in their career. You have to look at what they are looking for in those eight to ten days that they are with us. Each player is looking for something different. It is your job as the coach and support staff to provide that environment which helps him. In the case of Virat Kohli, Cheteshwar Pujara or KL Rahul, the plan was to go out and use that as match practice to perform in Sri Lanka. You try to cater to those demands. Then there are other young kids who are trying to break through and have come to learn, improve their games and impress the selectors for the first time. You handle them slightly differently.

That is the good thing about the A series. It gives the senior players an opportunity to come back. It was great of Virat to come in and play. It gave the A series importance and emphasised the fact that preparation is important. I think that when you go on international tours, getting match practice and time to prepare is important. He sent the right message across that preparation is important to me before the tour of Sri Lanka. If it is important for the Indian captain, it sends a message out to everyone else. The captain is taking the trouble to play the A series in Chennai so wherever we are, we have to be well prepared.

Do you work with selectors? Do you get into their ear, saying, keep an eye out for this guy?
It's a bunch of senior selectors that I know quite well. Sandeep Patil has been a coach, Roger Binny was a coach when I was with Karnataka, Vikram Rathour and Saba Karim have been in the same dressing room as me, and Rajinder Singh Hans I have got to know a little bit. It has been conversational and it is pretty relaxed and chilled out. I do share my thoughts on certain things when they ask me for it. They select the teams and I coach the teams. I am always conversing with them to see which players we can give opportunities to.

The good thing is that they also recognise that A tours are not just about winning. They want to see talent and that has been a nice thing for me. They said we are not worried about winning every game but we would like to see the guys get an opportunity to play. It has been a good rapport so far.

You will go on tour as well with the A team and experience different conditions.
There is not a lot of A team cricket, which is a pity. Some of the conversations I'll have with the board is to see how much more of A team cricket we can get, because, as you said, this should be a second level to the Indian team. If any injuries or loss of form happens, you have a bunch of guys who are playing cricket regularly, are match-hardened at a slightly higher level than the domestic level, and are ready to take spots in the Indian team. So we want to keep that going, and the more series we have, the better.

Are you going to approach the Under-19s a little differently?
We'll see. I don't have a set view about approaching things in a particular manner. I will just go and see what it is like. I'm looking forward to a tour with U-19s as much as I have had with the A team. We'll just take it as it comes.

Are you going to consider being coach of India at some point in the future?
I think Ravi [Shastri] and the team did a terrific job to bounce back in the series in the way they have after the disappointment in the first Test. When you lose like that after dominating a game for so much it can have a big impact on the team. I was worried for the series after that game, but the way they have come back in the second and third Tests has been a credit to all of them. They don't need anyone, and it has not whetted my appetite to do anything different.