How do you select a coach, and does a great player always make the best coach? Andrew McDonald, for example, was never a great player. But under his guidance, Australia won everything that there was to win in 2023.
To understand this, I will actually go away from cricket and to Neeraj Chopra.
Neeraj’s choice of coach is all reason and prudence. And in doing so, he has time and again pointed our attention to some key attributes that we need to keep in mind. “In 2018, I went to Germany to train with Uwe Hohn,” said Neeraj. Hohn, for the record, is one of the greatest-ever athletes, and now one of the best-known coaches. Neeraj, very humbly, settled the debate. “Unse mera technique match nahi kar raha tha. Sab thik nahi ho raha tha aur isiliye maine Klaus ko chuna. Wohi mere coach hain ab. Woh mere body ke mutabek mera training arrange karwate hain [My technique wasn’t matching with his. Things weren’t going well, so I chose Klaus (Bartonietz). He’s my coach now. He arranges my training according to my body].”
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And that’s where, inadvertently perhaps, he made the most telling point. It is not always about the world’s best coach or the best-known coach. It is about a coach who understands the athlete best, and applies scientific methods and techniques to the training. Just like you can’t make an athlete overdo preparation, you also need to ensure the athlete peaks at the right time. That’s what Klaus, his present coach, was able to help Neeraj do.
The other example is that of Park Tae-sang, PV Sindhu’s coach during the Tokyo Olympics. He was filling in for the legendary Pullela Gopichand. And make no mistake, a comparison was inevitable. Under Gopi, Sindhu had scaled great heights and won an Olympic silver medal and also a World Championship. In fact, in many ways, the Sindhu story is incomplete without mentioning Gopi. In such a situation, the separation was bound to hurt. For a while, we all wondered what impact it would have on Sindhu. That was when Park entered the narrative.
Having seen all of Sindhu’s matches in Tokyo from the stands, I can say Park did his absolute best. It all came out when Sindhu finally outclassed He Bingjiao and won her second consecutive Olympic medal. Park celebrated the win with a pump of his fist that is now part of Indian sporting lore. What was also very good to see was that he gave Sindhu a hug and, within a second or so, asked her to go back to court and congratulate her opponent and then soak in the moment. Park, it was evident, was happy to stay backstage and let Sindhu enjoy all the limelight.
That brings me to Rahul Dravid. Needless to say, as a batter, Dravid was peerless. A true legend of the game, and perhaps the best No. 3 India has ever produced. So, when he was appointed, we expected Dravid the coach to deliver on exactly the same lines as Dravid the batter. And that’s what has not happened. As coach of the senior team, you need to be a better man-manager than coach. Dravid, it could be said, is a better coach than man manager. This explains why he was stellar with the U-19 team, and has not yet been with the seniors. While he could mould the boys into better players, the seniors are already well-established stars. There is very little Dravid can do to alter their fundamentals.
Very few star players have made really great coaches, and this is something the BCCI could keep in mind while selecting the next national coach. While this is not to suggest that Dravid shouldn’t continue, it is also pertinent to state that being great player doesn’t necessarily make Dravid a successful coach. Our expectations need to be tempered somewhat. In every sense, the Newlands Test match at the start of the new year could be Dravid’s final opportunity. A home series win against England is expected, and won’t do much to enhance his credentials. Down 0-1 against a team that have their tails up, Dravid will need to do all he can to lift spirits and get the team ready for Cape Town.
As a batter, you could easily say that Dravid had the odds stacked in his favour, because it was him and his bat across the 22 yards. As coach, however, there are so many more variables and that’s what makes the challenge that much harder.
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