Published: Jun 21, 2011, 11:22 AM (IST)
Edited: Sep 04, 2014, 08:14 PM (IST)
By Amrut Thobbi
The West Indies-India Test series is under way and there is as much interest in how Duncan Fletcher jells with skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni and the rest of the Indian team. Critical to India’s rise in world cricket was the chemistry between the then coach Gary Kirsten with Dhoni, the senior players and the rest of the team. Despite his credentials as an international cricketer, Kirsten was wise enough to remain the background than take centrestage and risk saying things that could be misconstrued or misinterpreted by the media, thus leading to uneasy relationship with his team. Kirsten was minimalistic in his public pronouncements and utterly non-controversial. He gained the trust of his players with his conduct and respect for his domain knowledge as a coach.
Fletcher knows that comparisons with Kirsten will be inevitable, even if unfair. He also knows that Team India having reached the pinnacle of success, there is not much he could do to take it higher, other than sustain the position it finds itself in.
Unlike Kirsten, Fletcher had not toured India as a player and does have the benefit of experiencing the unique flavour of Indian culture – the politics, behind-the-scenes action, the regional undercurrents, the multi-cultural pulls and many other pressure points that one doesn’t experience in other parts of the world. How Fletcher manages all these and, most importantly, the omnipresent, in-the-face media would have a large bearing on how successful his tenure would be as Team India coach.
It still intrigues people why Fletcher was appointed coach by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) over, say, someone like Dav Whatmore who has a proven record and is no stranger to India. Why would an organization make an unknown person a part of its system if there is nothing analogous between the two?
This concept of including a stranger in one’s system is not a strange one in the corporate world. Recently, I read a story about a certain Venkatesh Prasad in the Economic Times. Prasad heads the research and development laboratory of automobile company – Ford India cars. In the interview to the newspaper, Prasad recollects how he got into automobile research and development. He says it was a complete accident. Prasad, who used to work for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, first received a call from Ford for a job in 1996. During the interview Prasad was asked how much he knows about cars. He replied that he did not know much. Much to his surprise, the interviewer said that the company would be happy to hire him because of his lack of knowledge about cars! Today, the same man is responsible for the development of Sync technology, an in-car digital solution which enables people to read email messages and enable the passengers to figure out the best traffic routes from inside the car.
This story tells us that being strange could be as much strength as it is a weakness. What is critical is how one puts it to use for one’s benefit. Prasad might have been stranger to the field of automobiles, but he was no stranger to innovation. He used his knowledge of propulsion that he acquired at NASA to help Ford develop a unique technology – Sync. Perhaps, Ford would have never developed such a unique technology had they hired someone who belonged to the automobiles business.
In case of Fletcher, one can expect similar kind of result. Like Prasad, who belonged to different field, Fletcher belongs to a different cricket culture. His style of working in cricket is different from that of India’s and his perspective on the game is very different from the way Indians think. Fletcher brought a different approach to the English team in the late 90’s which helped them to rise above mediocrity and scale great heights in world cricket. He along with the then England captain Nasser Husain is credited for creating and grooming a big pool of talent in English cricket. The likes of Andrew Flintoff, Steve Harmison and Andrew Strauss have been inspired by his unique coaching style and grown as cricketers during his stint as the English coach.
Today, India already has a large pool of talent and it needs a right person to groom them and ensure they scale greater eight in world cricket. Known for his astute tactics and mental training, Fletcher will bring something new to Indian cricket and add value to it in the future.
(Amrut Thobbi, an engineering graduate now pursuing Masters in journalism, is an ardent cricket fan. His passion for writing inspired him to give up a sales and marketing job, which he does not regret. By writing on cricket, he wants to relive his dream of becoming a cricketer. He has also worked as a freelance writer in education and technology sectors)
