My first crush

Copyright Akshay Rajagopalan.All rights reserved throughout the world

Why India needs Greg Chappell..

A visionary without peers; an objective analyst without a semblance of a bias; a radical mind with an innovative approach...Greg Chappell in an honest appraisal in a soliloquy days before India left. Wouldn't India be better off with such clarity of thought???

Excerpts:

What makes a Cup-winning team?

It basically boils down to the fact that through my 50 or so years of experience of watching, playing, commentating, selecting, talking, living cricket, I have learnt that there are certain things that work, and certain things that don't work, and so we better focus on the things that do work.

So then that was the focus: we said if we wanted to build a team that had a chance at the World Cup, there were certain things that we had to do well - batting bowling and fielding being the basic components of the game.

But there also had to be belief - belief is very important. One of the things that the support staff and the coaching staff and the team management was very much focussed on over the last 20-odd months was that we had to build that belief.

"We didn't have a lot of time to waste"

You know, going back to whatever World Cup it was that Germany won in soccer, where they had this total football, Australia has worked towards total cricket and I think most teams have to build the flexibility, build the depth, have replacements for key players in place.

When we took over -- I talked about where we began -- Ian Frazer has been a very important part of what we have been doing here in India, and one of the reasons why, one of the... from the start is that his training and his bent, if you like, is in how can you train better, how can you develop more quickly... How can you change from doing it one way to doing it another way in the shortest possible time to get the most benefit. And with only 21 months from the time we started to this point, we didn't have a lot of time to waste.

"The best lessons have been when we've done badly"

So we sat down with Rahul Dravid when he took over as captain around July 2005 and we looked at what would the team that won the World Cup look like?

And so we looked at a whole range of things, all of the facets of fielding, batting and bowling. The team that wins the WC will be a good fielding team. The team that wins the WC will have flexibility and depth in batting, and it will have bowling that will also have flexibility and depth, and more than flexibility, you know, the mental creativity to be able to adjust.

So, with Kiran More as chairman, with Rahul Dravid as captain, and with the support staff, particularly Ian Frazer and myself, we sat down and we looked at the components. And each step along the way, we had to review - before each series, after each series, we sat down and said how are we going in regard to this blueprint. And funnily enough, laugh if you like, the best lessons have been when we've done badly.

"We've made mistakes..."

Following the West Indies tour last year was a great time to review where we were at. The Champions Trophy, the Malaysian series before that, they have all had good lessons for us, some of them quite painful lessons, but lessons we had to learn if we were going to get to the point to do well at the WC.

We had fixed views on the qualities that were necessary, but there was no fixed view that we had to have this player, we had to have that player. And we've made mistakes - again, you have to make mistakes to learn some lessons. None of this is a perfect science, development of people generally is not a perfect science. It is a combination of experiences that all come together to develop the individual.

We've had to take risks, we've had to put players under pressure, we've had to give them challenges that they have never had before, you know, if they only think the way they have thought before, then they'll do the things they've done before and they will get the results they got before.

Now in the West Indies, we saw things we hadn't seen prior to that. You know, we had that run of 20-odd games where we won 18 of 22 or whatever it was, including a world record of 17 chases. That didn't teach us as much as failing in the West Indies. We realized that we were in danger of going down the wrong path here, we need to rethink this and change direction.

"We couldn't afford to have fixed views..."

A cricket team is a work in progress at any stage. At no point can you say, right, this is it. We can't go to the World Cup and say, right, this is it, we've got the format to win us the World Cup. We will have to be flexible enough to change our attitude and our thinking on certain things at various stages during the World Cup. So we, the coaching staff had to be flexible enough to do that, the players had to be flexible enough to cope with.

And I think one of the big things, one of the big challenges for the coaching staff in the time that I've been here is that you know, I think certain players and certain segments of the media had fixed views about the roles for certain players. We couldn't afford to have those fixed views because otherwise, the team wasn't going to progress.

If you only look at wins and losses, and this is something we have had to do along the way, we have had to take the risk of losing a few games to gain some advancement, to be a better chance for when we came to the World Cup.

We threw the batting lineup around, because we had to find out which players had the capacity to cope with pressure, which players had the capacity to perform well in this role, you know, was he better placed to do a role in this position in the batting order or in this position? Was he better placed to bat early in the innings, later in the innings, or in the middle of the innings?

So if we didn't try the different combinations, we wouldn't know what we had got. We have had to risk losing games to get some answers, because you can't get those answers in the nets, you can't develop players in the nets.

You can do a lot towards developing them, but if they can't take those lessons from the nets to the middle, then you haven't advanced them at all. You know, some of the players haven't been happy at times, because it is not the roles that they felt they were best suited to, or that was best suited for them, but we had to find the best roles for the team for each of those individuals, and I think we are as close as we can get to having worked that out.

If two bowlers are best bowling at this period of the game against this type of opposition because they've got a lot of left handers, or they've got a lot of players who play spin well, or they've got players who are susceptible to pace, then we have to change the format of our bowling attack for that particular game.

If we go in and say that this guy is going to bowl at this particular stage of the game in every game, we won't do as well as if we prepare to change that depending on the conditions. And what we have tried to do is give ourselves back ups for key players.

"When we lost Yuvraj, it exposed us..."

And it was nothing to do with - probably the best example of how important players can be and their role in the team can be was when we lost Yuvraj. He was probably one of the best one day batsmen in the world at the point when he got injured. And he was a key component in that successful run of 18 wins. When we lost Yuvraj, it exposed us to what problems we really had.

On Rahul Dravid

So all of a sudden - no, not all of a sudden because we were already planning down that path, and Rahul Dravid has been heavily involved in this from day one; I mean, Rahul Dravid is the captain, we haven't done anything that Rahul hasn't supported, and rightly so because he is the captain, he is the man who has to go out there in the middle. And there have been times when he has said no, I don't think that is the best way to go, this is the best way to go, and that is fine, because again, he is the guy that takes the team out on the field, and as much as he has been criticized at various stages for not being his own man, he has been very strong at various points along the way, because if he is unhappy with the team that he has got, that is going to impact on his ability to lead that team.

But, you know, we've pushed him as well, from a captaincy point of view, you know -- he came into the captaincy without a great deal of experience, I mean, he captained India on a few occasions but it is different being the real captain to the stand-in captain - it's been a huge adjustment for him and I think he has done a fabulous job, to be honest.

His captaincy during that period of 18 wins had a big bearing on us winning those games. And he is learning all the time, he is trusting his instincts better and better all the time, you know, he has had a strong input - for instance, when we came back from the West Indies, one of the areas that we had to change, tackle, was we realized that those overs 20-40, maybe even 15-40 but particularly 20-40, are critical overs in the one day game as it stands today, with the three power plays, and particularly playing on wickets that are less true.

"Sehwag had been struggling at the top of the order"

So we looked at the personnel that we had. It didn't work very well for us in the West Indies, we didn't feel we had the right balance in the middle order for those middle overs, so we looked at who were the best personnel to do it.

We felt that there were overs where you needed power to go through the field rather than just going over the field, you had to have creativity; the one player that we identified during that stage was Virender Sewhag, as one guy who had that power, had that creativity. Sehwag had been struggling at the top of the order, so here was an opportunity to give him a new challenge and learn something about, from two aspects, learn something about batting in the middle overs because for most of his life he had been batting at the top of the order, but also understanding some of the difficulties of the guys batting in the middle order, so that even if he didn't eventually finish up being the man batting there, he would have a different perspective as an opener of how difficult it is for these guys in the middle overs, as the ball gets softer, as the field spreads - you know, it does become harder, and for him to have a proper understanding of that will make him a better opener...

It didn't quite work out because the one series where we wanted him to try out was the in Sri LankaWest Indies. Where we made the mistake was in going to Malaysia and deciding that ah hell, we are running out of time, we'll try it here. We tried Sehwag in the middle order in Malaysia. It wasn't the right type of wickets, it didn't work very well and we had to rethink it. I think maybe the Champions Trophy might have been a better time to have tried it but again, you know, it is difficult, we came into the Champions Trophy, we saw it as an important stepping stone for the world cup, and we perhaps missed an opportunity to keep our development process going. and that series got washed out. They were wickets that replicated a number of wickets we played on in the

We thought we'll go with what we've got, and we didn't do very well. Again, it was probably a good lesson for us. South Africa on top of that, South Africa was always going to be a tough tour

Without Yuvraj again, we were exposed in the middle order so again, it caused us to stop and rethink. And to Rahul's credit, I mean he has been fantastic through all of this, I mean he has been willing to be the one to go to the top of the order, go down the order, go wherever he has had to go for us to find out different things. I mean if leadership is not about leading by example then I don't know what it is, and Rahul's been very good in that respect.

So coming back from South Africa, we weren't sure still at that stage whether Yuvraj would be fit for the World Cup. So the one thing that we've been working the hardest on, we being the playing group and the coaching group, is to find a solution to our middle order if Yuvraj isn't fit.

Sehwag probably wasn't that comfortable with the idea of batting in the middle order; so we talked to Sachin about it. By this stage Sourav had come back, so that had given us another opening option and a very good opening option, because he has had a good record as an opener.

So we asked Sachin to try it. I think it is fair to say that he wasn't, you know, that he preferred to bat at the top of the order, but when we explained to him the reasons and the need from the team point of view, he was prepared to try it and I think he has done a wonderful job with it so far.

A lot of people look at Suresh Raina as a failure. I don't see it as a failure at all, in fact, the kid's got a lot of talent, and if you have a look at the stats on Cricinfo of the last couple of years in one day cricket, his record in partnerships, in different areas, has been fantastic. He has been a good cricketer for India in the past, unfortunately for him there wasn't room in the 15 for this World Cup.

The good news is that he was forced out by others that brought things to the group that we could use. You know, Robin Uthappa has been a godsend, that's not probably the word I would like to use, he's been a blessing for us anyway, you know, he's a good field, he's a good thinker, he's an impact player that we can use at the top of the order, so he gives us backup.

"Yuvraj is on the way back and ready"

So we were looking for backups for key players, Sachin has provided us some back up for Yuvraj. Thankfully, it looks like Yuvraj is on the way back and ready. Rahul coming down the order also gives us some flexibility in that middle order

At this stage, we've had the bonus - Yuvraj is back and he is looking good. Dinesh Karthik has been sort of misunderstood, the flexibility he brings to the group is slightly misunderstood. We - and I use the royal we, Rahul Dravid, Ian Frazer, the selection panel, myself and others are involved in it - we played a couple of trial games in Chennai before we went to Malaysia and Dinesh played in the opposition team and opened the batting and played a couple of brilliant innings.

So all of a sudden we saw him in a different light. We saw him as an obvious backup for Dhoni in the sense that we've got a wicket keeper, a designated wicket keeper, not having to again cast Dravid into the sort of role to give us the balance, and he has the flexibility to bat up the order or low down the order, and as we saw in Cape Town, he has a great temperament, and he can fit into the fielding side very well, so he is an all rounder.

"We put a lot of faith into Irfan"

You know we put a lot of faith into Irfan because of his all round status. The potential that he has to make a big difference to our group - and again, the flexibility; if we want to go with five bowlers, five specialist bowlers, he is the only one that gives us that flexibility because he can bat. And again he can bat at the top of the order, he can bat down the order.

You know, I think he is best suited as an impact player at the top of the order and that is how we've used him, and with some success. Nobody factored in that he would lose confidence and form with his bowling, but he's been through that before and he's come out of it, and who's to say that something on the lines of the World Cup isn't going to bring the best out of him, because one thing we've found with him is he's got an amazing temperament -- we threw him into roles in batting that challenged him enormously, and he came through nearly every time.

It's been a challenge; it's been an important part of the development process of the group to get them to understand. I mean, we broke them up into small groups, because leadership in the field is critical to the development of a team, and what we found was that in the meetings, the senior players spoke and no one else spoke, because of the hierarchical nature of India and all of that stuff.

Munaf's been a very important part of that development; Zaheer coming back in the form and the mindset that he has had has been fantastic. Harbhajan has done a wonderful job for us in the middle overs; we are getting better at bowling at the death though we can always get better with that - again, you know, we've tried different combinations and for different situations and different conditions we've got a bit more flexibility. If we could get more flexibility it would be great, and Irfan coming back into form would be an important part of that; it would give us a bit more flexibility.

But we've got Sehwag and we've got Sachin and Yuvraj and we've got three pretty useful, you know, Sourav is medium pace and we have got three useful spinning options, I mean, Sachin can bowl seam up if he needs to or he can bowl off spinners or he can bowl leg spinners or a combination - very clever. So I think again, we have the flexibility to allow us to play to our strengths, and that is all we can ask for.

The End