Dravid Q&A: 'Role of coach is overrated and overstated'

Rahul Dravid has been in the news for a variety of reasons in the recent past – he was named as mentor of the Rajasthan Royals team, played a big role for them during the IPL auction and he was also named by Sunil Gavaskar as the man who should replace Duncan Fletcher as coach of the Indian cricket team.

Now, that set the cat among the pigeons but you can always count on Dravid to clear things up as quickly as possible. In a press conference organised by Gillete, Dravid spoke about all things cricket – from Fletcher to the role of a coach in modern cricket. Pujara’s bowling, Dhoni’s captaincy found a mention as well.

Excerpts from the interaction:

Sunil Gavaskar recently said that he thought you should be made the next coach of the Indian cricket team…

Firstly, I am happy that he thinks I am capable of doing the job but I honestly don’t think I can commit the kind of time that the job requires. The Indian team job is a 11-month affair and I have just retired from international cricket so I don’t think I can do the job at the moment. You never know in the future but at the moment, I would say ’no.’ I am with the Rajasthan Royals team but that is a two-month job as compared to the Indian one. Time permitting I would love to work with the India under-19s or the India A team but the India coaching job is not possible in the moment and definitely not in the near future either.

Do you think Indian needs a new coach?

I think with the World Cup just a year away it is unlikely that India will make any changes to their coaching staff or any part of the leadership group. And you have to at least give them at least four years to make the changes. We have two big tours of England and Australia coming up and the World Cup after that as well. If there will be a review, it will probably be after the World Cup.

Why do you think India are performing so poorly overseas?

Well, it is not something that has just started happening. I have been part of the team that lost eight matches in a row towards the end of my career and we had some very, very good players. It is a learning process and to be fair to this Indian team, they had two really good opportunities on the last two tours to win matches and they weren’t very far away. Slowly, they will get better. England and Australia are going to be huge tests for them.

There has been some talk that the next coach of the Indian cricket team should be from India. Your thoughts?

The nationality of the coach is irrelevant… if he can provide what the team needs then it doesn’t matter where he is from. We have had Indian coaches involved with this team in the past decade as well. Over a long period Robin and Prasad were with the team – so it is not like Indians haven’t been involved. So far me, nationality of the coach is not a big issue.

What I will, however, say is that over the last few years with so many coaching programs in the NCA – there is a lot more professional coaching even at the Ranji level. So obviously the pool of talent among Indian coaches is building up all the time.

But for the position of the Indian coach – I think they should just pick the best man for the job, regardless of his nationality. If he happens to be Indian then so be it.

What kind of coach should the Indian team be looking for?

Look I want to make one thing clear that sometimes the role of coach is overrated and overstated. I think sometimes you can go overboard but the resposibility should always lie with the senior players. At the end of the day, it is their team. A team is defined by what the senior players bring to the party and in the end, they are the ones who have to perform. The coach can help bring the right environment and conditions… and you can neccessarily always judge coaches on results.

I know they are always judged on that but you can’t always do that because say someone is coaching Bangladesh is not going to always get great results but that doesn’t mean he is doing a bad job. But how you prepare players and what you do with players is also very important. That is why sometimes coaches are on a hiding to nothing. They can’t really influence the course of a game but they get judged on the course of a game. All of them know and respect that… that’s how life is… but I think the responsibility must also lie with the seniors, the captain along with the coach.

Do you think coaching changes from format to format?

I think in T20 captaincy is very, very important. Because you don’t have the time to discuss tactics with coaches. Once you are on the field, it really is up to you… there is no fall back. In the IPL, at least you have the strategic timeout but in international cricket, there is nothing. So it really is up to the captain. One or two bad overs can cost you the match. In fact there is very little the coach can do after preparing you for the game. The coach’s job finishes once the game starts.

Pujara as a bowler – does that surprise you? Is that the way into the team in the shorter formats?

I think someone like Pujara is to me – can definitely make a mark in ODI cricket. I speak from my experience as someone who was seen as a Test player and I was able to develop and build my game for one day cricket and play successfully for quite a long time and I am no doubt that Pujara have the ability and skill to do that. It’s nice to see that he has got into the ODI squad. Obviously at the moment with the number of young players in the squad, he hasn’t been getting enough playing time. Hopefully, that will come. There are tours of England and Australia coming up and someone like him will get a look in.

We all need to keep working and developing our skill but I don’t see why he cannot succeed in ODI cricket. When I see him batting in Test cricket and the way he rotates the strike… the kind of shots he hits… it not only about hitting sixes. He can score runs pretty quickly and he does that in Tests too. He is, however, fighting in a pretty cramped middle order and that is the challenge for him.

In the end, Pujara will be judged by his batting. I don’t know how good his bowling is. Having an extra skill is nice but I don’t think it is critical. Dilip (Vengsarkar) had a long career and he didn’t have an extra skill. I kept for a short period and though I rate my off-spin quite highly (I got Saeed Anwar out), but I didn’t need another skill. If you are a good enough player and you can get into the top five batsmen… then you don’t neccessarily need another skill. If he can bowl, that’s nice. But that shouldn’t be paramount.

Kumble has said that even overseas India should always play two spinners…

I would like to believe that we should go into the overseas tour with five bowler with Jadeja batting at seven – now that he is batting quite well. Because I think on the last two tours, we got ourselves in the position to win two games but we just couldn’t finish them. So ideal scaenario for me would be to somehow try and play five bowlers and that will maybe give you a chance to win. Two and two can sometimes be risky and given that we are now playing on green wickets almost everytime we go abroad so in that kind of scenario, if you are asked to bowl first, it can be kind of tough. With Dhoni, Ashwin and Jadeja (who are developing as allrounders) maybe they can do the job at 6,7,8.

Do you think Dhoni is not comfortable with five frontline bowlers?

Look, he has a young batting line-up so maybe he feels more comfortable with more batsmen. But tradionally we have all done the same so let’s not just blame him. After Kapil Dev, we have not had the confidence of being able to say that we have that genuine allrounder. I think Dhoni is as good a batsman as anyone is and Jadeja is really improving. Ashwin is improving… in his batting. We are going to have to be brave to win a Test match abroad. We are getting in positions to win but are unable to take 20 wickets and that is an area that we need to plug. We might get bowled out cheaply sometimes because we have a batsman less but we will also get the opposition out when we are in the position to do so with the extra bowler.

How can India find another Kapil Dev?

Quality of Kapil comes along once in a generation. Very hard to find. Look we have never had that kind of medium pace allrounder – there was Vinoo Mankad but he used to bowl left-arm spin. A proper fast bowling allrounder, we have had one in our whole history and find another one… isn’t very easy.

Ashwin has been exceptional in India but he has struggled outside India. Do we keep showing confidence in him?

Well, the England and Australia tours are going to be important for him as well. He has experience in international cricket but he hasn’t played too many matches abroad. I think we have to be a little bit more patient with him and give him the freedom and scope. Judge him only after we have given him enough opportunities… we shouldn’t be harsh, set tough standards but judge him fairly.