No team can have 11 pants or 11 pujars: Batting Coach Vikram Ratur
Conversations with players are important and one must be open to everything, says Team India batting coach
renowned former national team selector and current batting coach Vikram Rathur has seen his share of ups and downs in the Indian team. From going live with the 36ers in Adelaide to winning the series, followed by beating England at home, it’s been a rollercoaster ride.
Rathour spoke with TOI at length, underlining the team’s batting philosophy, individuals at the helm and the big picture going forward.
Excerpts…It’s been close to 20 months since you came aboard as Team India batting coach. What’s the learning been like?Learning has been a constant and that’s been the case not only in this job. Even when it was about coaching a state team or being associated with the IPL as coach, it was constant learning. It’s like education – a life-long experience.
Especially when you start working with an elite group such as the Indian men’s team, the responsibilities are that much more. From victories, from losses, from dealing with different individuals who apply different methods to their game, to making optimum use of data, crunching numbers, dealing with the analytics to plotting game plans – it doesn’t stop.
What’s your philosophy on being the batting coach of the Indian team. What’s the big-picture you keep looking at?
The idea is to be open to everything, every single idea, every potential line of thought. I’ve refrained from categorising myself as a technical coach, or a tactical coach. I think, as a good coach, as a good batting coach, you need to be able to deal with multiple aspects of batting. We sometimes over emphasise the importance of technique. To be able to succeed at this level, along with good technique a player needs good temperament, he needs to have good tactical awareness, adaptability, etc. Everyone has their unique way of playing or technique. That’s when it’s important to realise that it’s more about man-management. Conversations become more important. Asking the right questions and helping them find solutions to their problems is the key.
So, it’s all about effective communication…
Yes, I believe the most important thing with coaching is communication. You need to be able to talk to players. Players will have different temperaments, different ways to learn things. So, there is not one way of dealing with issues, right? How you speak to X is often starkly different from how you speak to a Y. So, I think communication or man-management, as we say, is the key to coaching at this level.
Dealing with a Pujara, vis-à-vis dealing with a Pant is like dealing apples and oranges. It’s probably the case between every two individuals in the team. That would mean separate sessions, with different approaches…
Group discussions are always there, and they tend to work amazingly from a team perspective. What I’ve tried to do alternately is bring about one-on-one discussions too. It’s a regular thing now and it works best from a batting coach’s perspective. Whether it’s Pujara or Pant, each of them has a different mindset, different work-ethics and listening to them is the only way for me to understand them and their thoughts. What they’re trying to do over the following months, what are the areas of concern they’re looking to address. When you have extremely talented and versatile individuals in a group, it is that very bent and flair that requires individual space. Let’s say Pujara – he’s extremely determined, very gritty and very disciplined. That’s how he’s been generally in life too, not just cricket. He’s someone who has very strong routines, and follows those routines to the T. And then you have a Pant – who’s fearless, has a lot of fun, loves taking his chances, likes to go hammer & tongs from the word go. And that’s how he is in his real life as well. Loves to do things his way. Now, no team can have eleven Pujaras and eleven Pants, right? It always takes a Pant and a Pujara together to make a winning combination. So, what’s the cue here from a coach’s perspective – it is imperative to allow them to be who they are, on and off the field, and to expect a Pant to be like a Pujara and vice-versa. Your basic nature reflects in the way you play your cricket. There’s a reason why Pant bats the way he does – because he is like that in life. The challenge for me as a coach is, can I make Pujara agree to add one more shot to his armoury, probably get him to be a little more explosive when the situation demands? Or can I get Pant to absorb that one element of a Pujara, probably at times consume a few more balls before he starts taking off? It’s about adding that one extra element from time to time. If I can do that, the job is done.
From the perspective of a batting coach, sum-up Virat Kohli for us…
Virat is, of course, the best there in the world. His records speak for him. The kind of talent and consistency he’s shown is there for all of us to see. His work ethics are second to none. But for me, the biggest quality I see in Virat, and I’ve said it before too, is his adaptability. In that aspect, he’s unique. He is someone who can effortlessly shift gears and change his game depending on the situation and that is his biggest quality. We have so many players today, internationally, who have strengths and certain areas in which they’re at the top of their game. Some take stress well, some have good defence, some can be explosive at will. Virat is a combination of all these elements and that, I think, is his biggest strength. He’s a complete package. In 2016, when he scored those four hundreds in the IPL, he hit some 40-odd sixes, and had a strike rate of 150-plus. I joined the team, as a selector, after that IPL and we were playing the West Indies in Tests. Now this guy, who’d just come from the IPL having scored 900-plus runs, goes into the first Test and scored a double hundred without hitting a single ball in the air. So, it’s not about whether he can hit a six, of course he can hit a six. But does the team or the situation require that now, or does it require him to stay out there in the middle and man the ship? Virat’s the kind of guy who can change those gears better than anyone else in the game today. That’s what makes him who he is. I haven’t seen anybody who can do it the way Virat does it.
India travelled to Australia with a jumbo contingent. The team is now set to fly to England with a 24-member squad. How healthy is a problem of plenty when you have such a large number of players at your disposal?
People competing for slots is good. A healthy competition at any level is always good. It brings out the best in individuals. But at the same time, I think, as I said earlier, anybody who goes through the ranks and reaches this level to get into the Indian team has made a huge achievement. So, anybody who does that should be given enough opportunities and the right support to establish himself and fulfil the potential. That is the only way you can bring security to the team as well. If they’ve come this far that means they’re good and they belong here. Otherwise you cannot get to this level in the first place. So, if someone has come this far, allow that individual the space and time to prosper.
The transformation of Rohit Sharma and the growth in stature as a cricketer across formats has been a phenomenal one. We’re seeing a very different Rohit now in Test cricket…
Rohit Sharma is a man finally in control of himself, his thoughts, what he wants to achieve and where he wants to head from here. Rohit always had the game and the talent to be successful even in Test cricket. What has happened lately though is he has sorted out his game-plan in this format. Look at the way he began approaching his Red ball cricket, since he has turned an opener, from 2020 onwards. He always had a terrific game plan and method that made him such a prolific run-getter in shorter formats. But he may not have been so certain about how he intended to approach the red-ball format. But you see Rohit in Test whites today and you know this man has a very sorted game-plan. He consciously began working on it. Now he is much more relaxed and disciplined at the start of his innings in Test cricket, he likes to take his time to settle down and once he has, we know what he’s capable of.
..And he’s showing an amazing hunger for big hundreds…
Well, if you look at his First-Class records, he’s always been the one to get those big hundreds. Even in ODIs and T20 cricket, it’s never been a case of 105, 110, 115. Once he gets there, he keeps going. In the past few months, he’s shown what he’s capable of in Test cricket too. He’s someone who’s now beginning to come across as a cricketer constantly in a state of transformation, capable of tearing apart any attack anywhere in the world.
Yes. In fact, you think we’re yet to see the best of Rohit Sharma in Test cricket?
Yes, I’ll agree with that. In Test cricket, he’s just starting. If he keeps going like this, we’ll be seeing a different Rohit in Test cricket. His best is still to come.
You’ve been a wicket-keeper-batsman. What do you make of this heavy in-flux of wicket-keeper-batsmen? There’s a clear focus on the part of individuals to be multi-utility cricketers. We used to talk about this term ‘multi-utility’ last decade…
In my understanding, you’ve got to appreciate what the IPL has done in this space. It has given the platform where India’s new and upcoming talent is getting an opportunity to compete alongside or against the best in the world. Look at the exposure you’re getting. That exposure has to be the biggest reason. The IPL had started when I was the selector but if you look at the IPL in recent years and what it has done, it’s phenomenal. In the initial years, we were concerned – who will replace a cricketer like MS Dhoni when the time comes? There were worries about getting quality spinners. And look at the influx now – the Axars, Jadejas, Kuldeeps and Chahals. Same with wicket-keeper batsmen. Suddenly, everybody is as good as the other and a huge credit for that must go to the IPL.
