Back to school

What does an international cricketer do when he runs into a bad patch, inevitable in a career of any decent length? Those who have been through the experience can tell you how frustrating it can be, how frightening even, with the Damocles sword of exclusion from the team hanging ever so delicately over your head.

Ideally, however, the BCCI can do nobody any harm if it sets up a permanent remedial action group to which players struggling for form can turn, provided the international schedule will give them the time to introspect and go back to school, as it were.

Sometimes, the player concerned brings continued failure upon himself by getting into a tizzy after a couple of poor displays. But more often than not, a technical flaw is at the root of the problem, a bad habit picked up unknown to the player. An example from a bowler's point of view is a dropping bowling arm i.e. tired shoulders leading to a slightly more round-arm action than usual. This is something the bowler himself does not notice but should become fairly obvious in video footage available to players these days.

In the old days, it took a friend to walk up to the bowler and point out the mistake. It would be even more helpful if the friend also knew enough cricket to tell the affected player how to correct his recently developed problem.

Not having played Test cricket, I do not for a moment suggest that I am personally familiar with the kinds of problems Test players face. But when I was bowling really badly at one stage, a ten-minute session with the late Vasant Amladi, a brilliant though then unknown coach, did the trick. I actually joined a group of under-12 boys he was coaching at the nets. Not only did Amladi spot the problem, he also offered a solution immediately, something even great cricketers may not be capable of doing sometimes.

English bowlers used to go Alf Gover's school to correct faults that cropped up in their actions or simply to do a kind of refresher course. The MRF Pace Foundation and Dennis Lillee have helped many fast bowlers, including our Test bowlers recently, to go back to their basics and work on eliminating weaknesses and strengthening strengths. The TV commentary box, I understand, also has its share of benefactors to whom players sometimes turn for advice when in trouble. With men of the stature of Sunil Gavaskar and Barry Richards around, that can be quite a handy resource.

Ideally, however, the BCCI can do nobody any harm if it sets up a permanent remedial action group to which players struggling for form can turn, provided the international schedule will give them the time to introspect and go back to school, as it were. Perhaps prepare a pool of experts, not necessarily the greatest of cricketers but coaches with demonstrated ability and sincere commitment, who with the aid of modern technology, can analyse the player's problems and show the way forward. A player like the gifted Indian skipper, who is obviously in need of this kind of input, will probably find it difficult to sort out his problems in the heat of the action, even with a top class coach like John Wright by his side. What a player in such a situation needs is time spent in calm reflection, with the help of an expert he can trust. And what better place can there be to offer such a facility than the National Cricket Academy?