Most India batsmen have done justice to their talent - Bangar

One year into the job. How would you assess your performance overall?
Something which has really been a memorable and an enjoyable experience. To be able to contribute to the cause of Indian cricket after retiring from the game, that too in such a capacity, has been an overwhelming experience. And I think our [the three assistant coaches B Arun, R Sridhar and Bangar] work speaks for itself, with the results we have got.

How difficult was it to enter a dressing room that was very low on morale last September?
It was not much of a problem to be honest. And the credit for that should go to the boys. They made us really comfortable to begin with. And once we started knowing each other better, it has become a smooth ride. Being a group of Indian coaches, there was a bit of pressure to justify that Indian coaches can handle the national team effectively. There also was an additional sense of responsibility towards the Indian coaching fraternity. And I think we have been able to maintain the standards. That is something that I think we have been able to achieve.

How long did it take for you and the players to get acquainted with each other's style?
It's an ongoing process. You cannot say that "okay now this has been achieved". It definitely makes sense that you need to spend a lot of time with players. Not just on the field, but even off the field you need to develop a trust factor. Once you achieve that, I think it becomes a lot of easier.

Last year's home season was all about preparing for the World Cup. How challenging was it to get players attuned for it while playing the two ODI series in India?
The planning was towards finding the right players. Based on that, the team tried to give opportunities to a lot of players, to the players who we were thinking would do the job for the Indian team in the World Cup. That was more or less on the one-day front. Definitely the World Cup was a big event but at the back of our minds, we knew that the toughest assignment would be the Australia Test series and the team would be judged by how it would perform on that 130-day tour in that trying place for cricket.

Over to Australia. How did you get players focussed on the Test series initially?
I think that is where the direction given by our team director was very very vital. That's where Ravi Shastri stood out in the sense because he was somebody who had succeeded in Australia. He ingrained that sort of quality that we need to stand up, look into the eye of the opposition and compete. That is something every Indian cricket fan wants. We want a team which competes on a cricket field. We had a poor overseas record in the last 15 Test matches or so. The will to fight was something that we wanted to seek. That team on the tour to Australia showed that. Even though we didn't get the results, it competed really hard and there were occasions when we could not close matches from winning positions, in Adelaide and Brisbane.

What were the specific adjustments you wanted batsmen to make before the Test series?
Every individual player is different. They have their different techniques. There are certain areas of strengths and vulnerabilities for every batsman. Some batsmen prefer getting behind the line while some batsmen want to stay besides the line of the ball. Based on that the areas where they score runs vary.

Also we make a conscious effort of studying what the opposition bowlers' plans are and merge those analytical aspects into how the batsmen can integrate their game plans to negate those strengths of the opposition.

Cricket is all about angles. How you can tackle somebody who is bowling wide of the crease or is bowling a particular type of delivery, where to stand on the crease. Those are the areas apart from the minor adjustments in technique, like certain players had to make minor adjustments about their initial movement. Certain players had to make minor adjustments as far as their hip alignment was concerned. I think overall that has been the process adopted with this current line-up.

Virat Kohli wasn't found out trying to poke outside off stump in Australia. What did you discuss with him?
The hip alignment that we spoke of worked really well for him. He worked very hard on his hip alignment, back and across initial movement. Also Shastri advised him to stand outside the crease to get on top of the bounce. Apart from that, it's that individual desire and the hunger to go out there and take on the opposition which somebody like Virat has in abundance.

Cricket is totally a team effort wherein players' desire, certain inputs and the work that goes on behind the scenes to make sure that players are as best prepared as they can be so that they can be in the best possible mental frame wherein their confidence is really high. Also how they have enough options and enough awareness about how to tackle strengths of the opposition bowlers. That is something that goes on constantly behind the scenes.

Kohli's problem sort of resurfaced during the Sri Lanka series. Is it a technical issue or more of an instinctive reaction?
I don't think so because he is the one who batted beautifully in the first two matches and even in the third Test match, he spent a lot of time. He definitely had a great discipline on judgment outside off stump. What's happening is that the bowlers are going to start bowling wider to him. This is something he is aware of and he is wanting to add another element to his cricket. He is someone who is a very, very quick learner. With time, he wants to stay ahead of the game, ahead of the opposition all the time.

Going back to Australia, the Test series was followed with the World Cup. How would you sum up the overall World Cup campaign?
If you look at the past, there was only one such instance, in 1992, when the World Cup was preceded by a long Test series. The amount of time spent in Australia by that team and this team was quite similar. I think that is probably the best World Cup cricket played by an Indian team in Australia. You can add that in 1985, the Indian team won the World Series of Cricket. I do think that the quality of cricket played by that 1985 team and this World Cup team was very similar.

In Zimbabwe, it was only the three of you, without Shastri, managing the team. How different was it as compared to having Shastri around?
It was a very short tour and Ravi's availability was not on but he was regularly in touch with the team. Since it was only a short period, you cannot really judge.

Who was taking the final call?
It was collectively taken by all three of us, so it was a collective responsibility and that's how we were sharing it.

What was the biggest lesson learnt from the Galle collapse on the last morning?
The biggest lesson learnt definitely was… we knew playing spin in Sri Lanka would be a challenge and our record playing spinners in the recent past has not been that great. We spoke about it, we worked on the shots that the batsmen wanted to employ going into the Test series. But somehow we could not execute it in that particular session. It called for an honest review, a very, very honest review, the players were up for it.

What we did basically was we analysed the number of times batsmen were getting out to spinners, the number of times they were sweeping the ball, the strike-rate rotation aspect of the game, so I think an awareness was created. It was about the strike-rotation part, using your feet against the spinners, not allowing spinners to get on top of you. That is the awareness the management tried to create and we saw a big improvement in the performances about how we negated the challenges of playing spin in the second Test, I would say. The third Test was about playing seam bowling. You could see that there was a marked difference in approach and awareness between batting in the first Test and batting in the second Test. So it was quite satisfying to see that the batsmen had adapted so quickly.

What was the rationale behind promoting Rohit Sharma to No. 3 in Australia and sticking to it?
I think we are clear in our mind that we need to give enough time and opportunity for a player if we put him at a particular position before making the change. (Cheteshwar) Pujara was having a tough time, so he [Rohit] was given a fair run at No. 3. He batted very well in Sydney. He got starts in both the innings (53 & 39) but could not convert it into a big one. Bangladesh was just one innings. But you could see that just three innings prior to P Sara (second Test against Sri Lanka), he was scoring runs at No. 3.

After those five opportunities, we felt that moving him down the order would benefit the team more. And it also made sure that he got some time because he also had put a lot of pressure on himself to perform. Somebody who constantly wants to contribute to the team's cause. And it worked out beautifully. In both the Test matches (P Sara and SSC), he played vital innings for the team.

Do you think Rohit is justifying his place in the Test team?
If you look at the numbers, he has played 13 [14] Test matches and scored 800-900 [870] runs at an average of 40 [37.82] with two centuries, four half-centuries. I think if his critics can go back and compare the first 13 Test matches of any other cricketer who has played for a while, I think they would probably be less harsh on Rohit. I believe that in the matches that he has played so far - obviously everybody wants to contribute more - he has definitely contributed to the team's cause.

How do you handle someone like Pujara, who may feel hard done by sitting out, in such a case?
The approach for me generally is keeping the bench very, very strong. In fact, we give equal importance to the players who are not picked in the XI so that he gets enough opportunities, he is in the right frame of mind, his confidence levels do not take a hit, reasons for exclusion are told to him and keeping him match fit. So whenever that opportunity comes, he is ready.

Pujara has tremendous hunger, tremendous temperament. Again somebody who had a dip in his career but who is right up there. This is the batting group which is going to be the core of India's batting for the next five years. Obviously there are going to be players who are going to miss out because of injuries but every new player who has come in has scored runs.

There is a perception about Pujara that he sometimes tends to play too many dot balls, putting pressure on the batsman at the other end. Is that something you are working on?
Strike rotation is something we are all making our batsmen (aware) of. We are working on it. It is not only for one individual batsman but it is for the entire batting group. How you can achieve it is you need to know the fields, you need to know the bowling plans, you need to play with softer hands closer to the body. That is an awareness the batting group is working on and there has been a marked improvement in that area.

Who for you has been the most improved batsman over the last year?
I think if you assess the performance, everybody has flowered into a very, very capable and effective batsman for the team. If you go through their statistics, with over 30 centuries collectively in the last year, so far most of them have been able to do justice to their talent.

How challenging does your role as batting coach become with the captain's thrust on playing five bowlers?
It does prove to be advantageous. If (we are) batting last, with five bowlers in the team, the number of runs you are going to chase is going to be less. Instead of 350, you would probably be chasing around 275. At the same time, if you are bowling second, if you score 50 less runs, you know that there is a fifth bowling option, so probably we have better chance of bowling out the opposition for lesser total. There is an additional responsibility on the batting group but that is something which is vital to winning matches. That [bowling] is one area because of which the Indian team was not able to close matches.

As if coping with different formats isn't enough, you also have to deal with different captains. How different has it been working with these two captains?
Every individual captain has his own style. This is an experiment which hasn't been tried much but is done now in Indian cricket. Both of them have immense respect for each other. Both of them know the kind of cricket the teams they are leading want to play. Our job is basically to integrate our ideas into their vision. Preparation for us is vital with both captains. It's a challenge to keep the team as best prepared as it can be in all aspects of the game so that whoever leads the team gives himself the best chance to win games for the country.

With so much of limited-overs cricket played these days, today's youngsters tend to struggle to manage their scoring shots. How do you help a player improve his shot selection?
At most times, having too many scoring options can lead to a batsman's downfall if the shot selection is not judicious.

And that does happen a lot with today's batsmen, right?
I would say all these habits are formed by years of practice. The more amount of a particular format you play, the subconscious mind tends to form those habits which eventually creep in to the longer format of the game. So I think if one component has to be separated, it is that of playing with hard hands. And the quality of batsmanship that is required is of playing with soft hands and playing closer to your front pads. That is something all the players are aware of and have been working on. That is possibly the most basic challenge for all the batsmen.

Range of shots can be used to good effect when bowlers are bowling to a particular plan. If an offspinner is bowling round the wicket with only three players on the off-side, then that skill of playing a reverse-sweep or making the bowlers go away from their plan is handy. In the first half of the innings, playing close to your body and with soft hands is important. Apart from that, what also comes in handy with these skills is they don't really allow a bowler to get on top of you.

Defensive techniques appear to be a major problem with modern batsmen. Can it be improved when they reach the highest stage?
I would say players at international level can adapt very quickly. As far as our group is concerned, our utility or effectiveness against quicker bowling has improved. You can say that we have probably not been able to dominate the slower bowlers as much as the earlier era did. The cause of it may differ but that is something which has been identified.

We are encouraging our batsmen to trust their defence. And those defensive techniques are really vital when you are playing on slow, turning wickets when you can see the silly point, short leg in your eyeline. That is where the defensive technique becomes key. That is a skill which is everybody is aware of. Trusting your defence, getting to the pitch of the ball on a turning wicket, using the depth of the wicket as much as you can, staying leg-side of the ball against bowlers who have two options to spin the ball. These are the things we are working on and they have given us good results in the recent Test series.

You mentioned the recent problems of facing quality spin. Do you think it is linked with the kind of pitches in domestic cricket?
I don't think so. Yes, the spinners are bowling lesser and lesser, so we are actually playing less of spin in domestic cricket. Earlier in the 90 overs we played during our times, it would be 60 overs of spin and 30 of pace. Now I think it's tilted way too much in favour of one side. Now it's 70 overs of seam and 20 overs of spin. That is an area where we need to look at our domestic structure as well so that we have a good balance in honing the skills of our emerging batsmen vis-à-vis spin and pace.

How difficult is it to work with the Indian team on a series-by-series basis? Too much insecurity to deal with?
It's a massive privilege to be able to discharge the duties of batting coach of the Indian team. Ideally, a longer stint is better for the individual concerned but again even if it's just for a series, it's a huge opportunity and accomplishment.