Coaching Beyond: My Days with the Indian Cricket Team

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COACHING BEYOND reflects primarily on R. Sridhar's seven-year coaching tenure with the Indian cricket team as its fielding coach. This book isn't as technical as it is anecdotal.

It throws light, for instance, on how Virat Kohli overcame a dismal Test series in England in 2014 to smash four hundreds in as many matches in his next overseas outing, in Australia. It also traces Rishabh Pant's journey towards becoming the ferocious ball-striker and outstanding gloveman he is today while delving into the minds of players and the support staff to analyse India's progression towards the number 1 Test ranking. Revelations of behind-the-scenes parleys jostle with the then head coach Ravi Shastri's motivational skills in a riveting read that provides an insider's account of the rise and rise of Indian cricket.

R. SRIDHAR, a left-arm spinner who played for Hyderabad in the late 1990s, discovered his love for coaching when still an active player. Armed with the requisite knowledge and degrees, he took the National Cricket Academy route to the senior Indian team, where he served as fielding coach for seven eventful years, from 2014 to 2021 and formed an integral backroom coaching troika alongside head coach Ravi Shastri and assistant coach Bharat Arun. Sridhar is now co-founder of Coaching Beyond, an institute that intends to produce not just high-quality players but also coaches.

R. KAUSHIK has been a cricket writer for more than three decades. Since starting his career with Newstime in Hyderabad, he has worked with Deccan Herald and Wisden India in Bengaluru. He is the co-author of V.V.S. Laxman's autobiography, 281 and Beyond as well as Gundappa Vishwanath's autobiography, Wrist Assured.

His association with Sridhar dates back to 1991 and he had a ringside view of Sridhar's stint with the Indian team.

Coaching. This eight-letter word has massive connotations in the world of sport. It's a simple yet paradoxically complicated term that is impossible to define. Like everything else in life, it's an evolutionary process. From personal experience, I can assert that its paradigms change depending on which stage of your coaching career you are in and which group of players you are involved with. Over time, you graduate from an instructor to a facilitator to an empowerer in a journey that can at once be fulfilling and frustrating, exasperating and exhilarating.

I wasn't so much a reluctant as an accidental coach. Having made my first-class debut as a 19-year-old left-arm spinner for Hyderabad, I fought hard to nail a permanent place in a spin-heavy team that included stalwarts such as Arshad Ayub, Venkatapathi Raju and Kanwaljit Singh. By the 2000-01 season, I had played just 35 games, and I knew my cricketing career was at a crossroads. I did have a secure livelihood with State Bank of Hyderabad to fall back on.

As sometimes happens in such cases, when one door appeared shut, another opened without warning. V. Manohar, one of the head coaches at St John's Cricket Academy coaching camp, was emigrating to New Zealand and John Manoj, the other head coach, was looking for someone to work with the Under-19 and Under-22 boys, many of whom had represented Hyderabad teams at the age-group level.

From the time I can remember, R. Sridhar has been a part of my cricketing life. My first interaction with him dates back more than 35 years, when I was an Under-13 cricketer and he was in a higher age group. Our state camps, under Edulji Bujorji 'Eddie' Aibara sir, used to be held at the Gymkhana Grounds in Secunderabad. One of the first seniors to come over voluntarily and devote his time, attention and energy to us youngsters, was Sridhar.

It was my first introduction to the 'giver' that Sridhar is. Over time, we have got to know each other better and it delights me no end to see the kind of strides he has made as a cricketing and life coach. Sridhar has not allowed the grass to grow under his feet. He has constantly strived to learn and improve and get better each day. To me, it comes as no surprise that he has achieved the successes he has in his avatar as coach for the last two decades.

When I graduated out of the Under-13 ranks and gradually progressed towards the state side, Sridhar was a constant presence, thanks to the fact that both of us trained at St John's Cricket Academy in Secunderabad. We would also play against each other when I represented Andhra Bank and he turned out for State Bank of Hyderabad, or when my Ensconse Cricket Club team took on his Hyderabad Blues side in the Hyderabad Cricket Association leagues.