Application For The Post Of Team India Head Coach

To
Shri Sachin Tendulkar
Shri Sourav Ganguly
Shri VVS Laxman

Subject: Application for Head Coach, Team India

Dear Sirs,

This is in response to your advertisement for the post of Head Coach, Team India. Kindly convey my sincere thanks to Anil Kumble Sir, for creating a vacancy when the job market is shrinking like hemline in summer.

I don't really know why he quit but can make an educated guess that he paid the price for trying to be the Greg Chappell from Bangalore.

I heard he was determined to bring Virat's meeting with Anushka strictly under the FTP.

Being an ICC Cricket Committee member, he also insisted that Virat mouthed only MCC-approved, gender-neutral expletives. Apparently, he was mortally scared of having to say "Only one team is abusing in the true spirit of the game and it's not India."

A renowned wildlife photographer, he reportedly sought BCCI approval to drop Axar Patel in front of a starving lion in Gir to capture the beast's yawn.

While I don't boast a record like Anil sir, I have none of his eccentricities either.

I think the first attribute of a good coach is vision and mine is 20/20. I'm attaching the ophthalmologist's report corroborating it. Unlike Anil Sir, I can see the writing on the wall.

My biggest strength is that I've never coached any team in my life. I'm attaching endorsement letters from eight clubs confirming they never considered me worthy of the job.

My inexperience means existing ideas have not polluted or confined my views, and that I won't be just recycling the standard coaching practices to justify my salary. No.

As someone with no knowledge of cricket coaching, my ideas are naturally fresh, completely unbiased and potentially revolutionary.

It may shock the players initially but that's how all revolutionary ideas kick in -- with a bang and not whimper.

Unlike Anil Sir, I have a better idea of what the job entails. Trust me, I have no illusion about the job.

Players at this age don't need a coach. What they need is someone who is decent at baby-sitting. For instance, I've noticed players like Shikhar Dhawan tour with the entire family in tow.

I can look after the kids while their dads play and moms shop. I'm attaching endorsement letters from neighbourhood moms who'd vouch for my baby-sitting skills. I don't want to brag but I can change diaper blindfolded and with one arm tied behind my back.

I can even take their wives/girlfriends to shopping, in an "elder-brotherly" manner, if you know what I mean. I'm great at haggling and can get them the best deal anywhere. I'm attaching letters of endorsement from three exasperated shopkeepers to support my claim.

I know bit of cooking as well. So, for instance, if Rohit Sharma wants a bowl of noodles and walks out to bat, I can serve it piping hot when he returns.

I understand the job requires thick skin and I blush to inform that daily hundreds of mosquitoes blunt their precious proboscis trying to suck my blood. I'm attaching a clinical profile of the skin to support my claim.

As for mindset, after a decade of marital bliss, I'm clinically immune to criticism, sarcasm, humiliation and outright insults.

I read Anil Sir was the 'alpha male' in the dressing room. Kindly tell Virat that I'm ready to be the 'omega male' and he should not worry.

Sirs, in keeping with the demand of the job, I'm ready to feel unheeded and unwanted, and ridiculed behind my back.

If I understand it correctly, you are looking for a high-profile good-for-nothing, who should assiduously twiddle his thumb while the captain calls the shots.

I understand as Head Coach, my job would be to front the media after crushing defeats and dust the captain's chair before he addresses news folks post-victory.

Without further testing your presence, I believe I've strongly demonstrated that I have a crystal-clear understanding of the job.

Please find attached my CV. Should you need any further information, just give me a miss call and I'll call you back.


Yours sincerely
A permanently married, temporarily jobless Indian

A Captain Is As Good As The Coach He Gets… or… Coaches Win Matches

Now that BCCI is headhunting for a full-time coach, I ponder who fits the bill and wonder how much it hinges on the captain-coach relation.

I often felt that like openers, the captain-coach duo too needs to be perfect foil for each other, at least in Indian scenario. They should be as different as chalk and cheese, acid and alkali, yin and yang. I believe it’s like an average Indian couple. One of them has to make some sacrifice, concede an extra inch, and take the backseat to allow the other to cap the initiative. It may smack of male chauvinism but the reality if you have equal number of hen-pecked hubbies as against docile wives!

I feel the Sourav Ganguly-John Wright marriage yielded the results just because of that. Ganguly’s relation with the former Kiwi captain may have dwindled towards the end but the southpaw should acknowledge that he owes much of his success, and a good drink, to the affable Kiwi.

The Ganguly-Wright pair was just the perfect combination. An assertive, aggressive, hi-adrenalin skipper in perfect contrast to a reticent, introvert coach. Indian cricket owes a lot to Wright. A divorcee, away from his two sons, Wright spent many a lonely new year’s eve in company of candles and his favourite guitar in his hotel room in the adopted homeland.

You can always accuse him of being soft, vulnerable to Ganguly’s tantrums and whims but to his credit, Wright never used media to wash the dirty linen in public. Media is a dangerous weapon, a double-edged blade that hardly serves any purpose other than mudding the water. See how Wright’s successor manipulated media to serve his purpose and left the team in complete shamble.

Wright did raise issues with the men who mattered but Ganguly, with a Godfather in Jagmohan Dalmiya, could not be reined in, the zonal selection system stayed on (till Sharad Pawar’s regime just scrapped it) and other things also ceased to change. Despite all provocations, Wright never disgraced Indian cricket.

Once he quit – on his own, no mean feat in Indian cricket – I always doubted how long the Ganguly-Chappell honeymoon would last. Both are the same side of the coins, headstrong, abrasive, combative, pugnacious.

It was obvious that two men of such strong ego can’t share the dressing room and one had to go. Soon sparks started flying out all over and Chappell won the first round. Enter Rahul Dravid and to be honest, I expected this marriage to last longer and deliver the goods as well.

Dravid is a perfect team man, a reliable cricketer and a captain’s delight. But he is not the one who would assert himself . And I’m not the only one to feel so about a player who has played the second fiddle throughout his life – his epic knocks would always got overshadowed by VVS Laxman’s class, Ganguly’s pyrotechnics or Sachin Tendulkar’s stroke-making.

Dravid needed a coach like Chappell and the combination looked a balanced one. Somehow, despite their mutual admiration, the Dravid-Chappell pair did not produce the results. You can’t really blame Dravid. I believe a captain is as good as his coach. And at times, coaches win matches.

Now al-Qaeda and D Company in Woolmer’s murder!

Conspiracy theorists had a gala time in the wake of the Bob Woolmer Whodunit and now “The Sun” tops it all, linking Woolmer’s murder to, hold your breath, al-Qaeda and Dawood Ibrahim for those who came in late, Dawood is a guy in oversize goggles and drooping moustache. He took match-fixing even beyond Sharjah and found a match for his daughter who happens to be Javed Miandad's son).

The tabloid claims a Pakistan-based bookie (spare that poor country, plz) was thrown out of Woolmer’s room after a spat with the coach. The same bookie was spotted with Anees Ibrahim, Dawood’s brother and right-hand, in Jamaica, claimed the report. And the bookie has vanished into thin air since Woolmer’s murder.

Hitman, poison, strangulation, gambling, match-fixing, murder, bookie, D-Company and even al-Qaeda. So, what’s next?

Chappell's likely successors!

So India has already played the last match under Guru Greg, apparently so. If media reports are to be believed, Chappell can forget about an extension and rather pack his bag and board the first Qantas flight home.

So, who should take the hot seat now? I have some names in my mind, BCCI would do well to have a dekko at it. This is an open-end list, feel free to nominate yours.

1. Swami Ramdev: A popular, and hence not necessarily valid, view has been that endorsement has become a huge distraction and the cricketers simply have lost focus. And to right that wrong, you can’t have a better choice than Ramdev. He is no alien to cricket and he in fact had advised the players to practice Yoga before the World Cup. Dravid’s men must have ignored it and paying the price for ignoring his divine formula. At least one Team India member has been spotted visiting him once why don’t Dravid, Tendulkar, Ganguly and Yuvraj follow Dhoni? So, bye bye push-ups and welcome pranayam.

2. Lalu Prasad: So what if he messed up Bihar? See how he turned that Great Indian White Elephant, the Indian Railway, into a profit-making juggernaut. These days Mr Prasad is a sought after name even in the IIMs and Harvards. And he apparently believes he can player better than the Men in Blue. He heads Bihar cricket Association and his son, Tejaswi, has represented Delhi in Polly Umrigarh trophy. Enough link with the game, isn’t it? And haven’t you heard of railway coaches? If he can script a turnaround in Railway’s fate, what’s the heck is this cricket team?

3. Sonia Gandhi: Agreed Italy is more known for Pizza, Pasta, Leaning Tower, Don Corleon and a certain Marco Materazzi. Also agreed that so far, no Italian has ever been accused of being sighted in and around any cricket stadium. But just see how she’s running the Great Indian Coalition Show. She picked a compliant, acceptable captain to

lead a team which has its fair share of in-fighting but overall, it’s producing the results. She belongs to the Bennette King genre. King never played first class cricket and yet went on to coach West Indies in the World Cup. Madam fits the bill to the T.

4. Greg Chappell Again: Read it right. Journalists and fans across the country owe him a drink. Spat with Ganguly, middle-fingering Kolkata, showing how e-mail and SMS can be used to deadly effect and devaluing phrases like “means-over-outcome”, “experimentation” etc. Indian cricket won’t be the same once he departs.

My Encounter With Woolmer

So Kanpur lost its adopted son of the soil. Born in Kanpur, 19 Test matches in English colours, coaching South Africa and then Pakistan – Woolmer was nothing short of a cricket nomad.

Two years back, I remember being in Kanpur for the penultimate match of the India-Pakistan ODI series.

Away from the on-field circus, Woolmer was scheduled to visit the Georgina McRobert Memorial Hospital — his birthplace — and the hospital authorities had prepared the birth certificate which was to be handed over to Woolmer.

After filing previews and all that stuff, I reached the hospital well in time. Woolmer, completely drenched after a grueling practice session, arrived straight from the nets to inaugurate the maternity ward, which was rechristened the Bob Woolmer Operation Theatre.

Repeated requests not to crowd the room fell on deaf ears and eventually Woolmer had to squeeze in his bulky frame into the choc-a-bloc ward. Coming straight from the net session, he was sweating profusely and trying not to step on anyone’s toe and made a ketchup of it.

In a brief, chaotic and yet warm ceremony, Woolmer was handed over the certificate and I peeped into it to find out that he was born at 2.15 a.m. on May 14, 1948. Despite the obvious discomfort, Woolmer sported that disarming smile and the sparkling eyes from behind the smoky specs hardly suggested here was perhaps the most analytic brain in contemporary cricket.

And it was ruthless professionalism on display again the next day as Woolmer plotted India’s peril in the ODI, where Shahid Afridi butchered the Indian bowlers at Green Park during a brutal 45-ball century.

At Kingston on Saturday, it was end of all journey for the journeyman. Now with Woolmer no more around, other teams can now relax a bit.

Pak Wants Woolmer Beyond World Cup

Things have really changed for better in Pakistan Cricket Board. The PCB, which once swore by its hire-and-fire motto and dropped coaches and captains like hot potatoes after every alternate tournament, is thinking of extending coach Bob Woolmer’s contract beyond the World Cup.

Woolmer’s list of admirers maybe bereft of names like Imran Khan or Javed Miandad but more importantly, it features PCB Chairman Nasim Ashraf, who is currently with the World Cup team in the Windies (meanwhile, reports claim cricketers are not liking his presence around, finding it’s too close for their comfort). Ashraf has full confidence in Woolmer and he would like to see the journeyman coach continue with the team even after the World Cup.

Born in Kanpur, veteran of 19 Tests in English colours, coaching South Africa and now Pakistan – Woolmer has been nothing short of a cricket nomad. But his Pakistan sojourn seems going to be a bit longer than he had actually thought.