VVS Laxman: Memories of honing skills and building bonds

The Indian team is already in the Caribbean, two weeks before the start of the first of 17 Tests to be played over the next 9 months. With so much Test cricket lined up, I am itching for the action to begin. This could well herald the beginning of a new era in Indian cricket, with a new head coach in place whose aggression and approach is in synchronisation with the Test captain. COMPLETE COVERAGE: India vs West Indies 2016

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The six-day preparatory camp in Bengaluru was the perfect way to set the ball rolling. The camp would have allowed Anil Kumble to break back into the Indian dressing-room, just as it will have allowed the players the opportunity to interact with Anil on a close and more personal basis. From all the reports that have emanated from the camp, and from whatever the players have said during their interactions with the media, the camp was a massive success in terms of the specific nature of work that was put in.

A preparatory camp is important for more reasons than one. Admittedly, with players playing more and more cricket round the year, long breaks are not the norm like they used to be earlier. But while many of these players have played franchise cricket, a lot of them have not been together with each other as a team for a few months now. The camp, therefore, is a glorious chance to rekindle bonds with your mates, with men that you will spend more time with for the next year or so than even your families.

Apart from dusting the rust away and re-establishing contact, the camp also helped Anil and the players to get to know each other better. I thought the Drum Circle bonding session Anil had organised was a fantastic concept: it took many of the boys by pleasant surprise and exposed them to a facet of the coach’s personality that they previously might not have been aware of. Given all that Anil has achieved for the country, it is easy for the boys to be in awe of the head coach; through this simple exercise in which he was also an energetic participant, I am certain several of the shackles would have been shed.

Fortunately, the rain stayed away and the team was therefore able to have uninterrupted sessions. The facilities at National Cricket Academy are excellent both in terms of pitches, and gym and other training equipment. The team also had a match simulation exercise at the Alur Ground to break the monotony of nets and gym and get a feel of match conditions. All in all, from whatever I have gathered, it was an enjoyable outing for everyone concerned, which immediately took me back to my playing days and the various camps that I was a part of.

My first camp with the Indian Test team was in 1997, seven or eight months after my Test debut in South Africa the previous winter. Since then, I have attended numerous camps, but the one I recall with the greatest fondness is the camp we had at the IIT-Chemplast ground in Chennai in early 2001, ahead of the Test series against Australia.

John Wright had taken over as the Indian coach just a few months earlier, before the Test series against Zimbabwe in late 2000, and while we had spent time together in the dressing-room, it was always in an atmosphere of competition and match play. That was what made the 2001 camp different; we were in the preparatory phase, working out plans and strategising, working on our fitness and skills, working on specifics and doing so as a team not with the immediate tomorrow in mind, but with a slightly longer-term perspective.

Unlike this camp in Bengaluru which is at the start of the season, and will therefore set the tone for the months to follow, that camp was almost towards the end of the season as it existed then. The first two days of that camp in Chennai were spent almost entirely in the board room of the hotel where we were staying. What struck all of us was the passion that John displayed. It was the first experience of an overseas coach for all of us, and seeing how committed and involved John was, I thought was the right tonic we needed going into the contests against the mighty Australians.

Going back to those first two days, it was when goals and targets were set. But these goals and targets were set by the players themselves, not handed down by the coach. There is a fundamental difference between the two scenarios. When the coach tells you that these are the goals he has set, it is different from the players being empowered to set their own specific goals and targets. That means the player basically takes responsibility for his own actions because he is the one who has set a goal or a target for himself, and therefore will feel the overwhelming need to leave no stone unturned in his bid to reach that target.

All of us were asked to list out what our goals were for the team as a whole, and then for ourselves as individuals. Then, we were split into batting and bowling groups, and we had to set collective targets for our respective groups. Once all the data was collated, the goals and targets that were the most consensual were discussed at length on the second day, and adopted as the team goal and target. Everyone was encouraged to talk and deliberate, ideas were welcomed, and there was a general sense of camaraderie and bonhomie, a feeling of togetherness and buoyancy that was to stand us in good stead as the series unfolded.

Day 3 onwards was devoted to honing our skills, with again the responsibility on each individual to identify what specific areas he needed to work on, and what were the issues the respective groups were to address. Instead of this being a coach-driven camp, it was a player-driven camp with John more the facilitator than the enforcer. In saying that, I must emphasise that once we were allocated specialist catching positions — we had as a team to address the fielding goals as well — we took more catches in that camp than in any other camp because the idea was that by the time the actual matches come around, catching a cricket ball in your preferred position at slip or silly-point or short-leg would become almost second nature.

This was the camp that opened our eyes to the possibilities that lay ahead, a fact reinforced when we got together in Bengaluru ahead of 2003-04 home season. It was a particularly disappointing period for me. I was still trying to come to terms with missing the World Cup in South Africa, and for many of the boys, that loss to Australia in the final was the last slice of competitive cricket. We had a home series against New Zealand coming up, followed by significant tours of Australia and Pakistan, but by the time we met up in Bengaluru, many of us had not played a competitive game of cricket for three or four months.

By then, Adrian le Roux had joined the team as the physical trainer, and Andrew Leipus was our physiotherapist. Much of the emphasis in that camp was on fielding and fitness. John had identified these two areas as the ones that needed the most attention, and when we did not do fitness, we were hard at work honing our fielding skills. I remember there being very little batting practice as such. We had two long, hard sessions each day during the week-long camp, but fortunately, the weather in Bengaluru is such that it allowed us to work at our optimum capacity even when the temperature was at its highest during the day.

I cannot overstate how crucial those fitness and fielding drills were in the months to follow. We drew both Tests against New Zealand, but gave Australia a real run Down Under and should have won that series. We had a good tri-series there, and then went to Pakistan where we won both the Test and ODI series on Pakistani soil for the first time ever. The exertions at the camp had paid off very well.

The other camp that I recall was the one in 2008, just before what was to be Anil’s last Test series. Again, the camp was in Bengaluru, this time under Gary Kirsten, ahead of the four-Test home series against Australia. Cricket was at the forefront, as was the strategising, but my particular favourite was the team bonding session that we had on the outskirts of Bengaluru. The entire team was divided into three groups — two made up of players, the third comprising the support staff. Each group was entrusted with the task of writing a script, directing and acting out a movie. We did Singh Is Kinng, the support staff had Rock On!!, and the other playing group had to enact Sholay. It was just a fantastic experience, bringing out the creative side of all of us in an entirely different setting to a cricket match. There was so much energy and enthusiasm, and while Rock On!! won the best prize, we were all reinvigorated and re-energised.

At the end of the day, whether the camps are exciting, boring or purposeful depends on the protagonists. You can either go with the flow and do the routine drills, or you can improvise and innovate with an eye on various aspects — not only cricket, but also character and relationships.

The Indian team has got off to the perfect start in that regard, given the good things about the Bengaluru camp of 2016 that everyone has spoken of. I for one cannot wait to see this bonding and the honing of skills translating themselves into match environment.

(VVS Laxman, CricketCountry’s Chief Cricket Mentor, remains one of the finest and most elegant batsmen in history. He was part of the iconic Indian middle-order for over a decade and a half and played 134 Tests and 86 ODIs. He tweets at @vvslaxman281)