Slim pickings

Siddarth Kaul, a 17-year-old aspiring fast bowler from Haryana, caps his 20-yard run-up with a final hop and delivers with a side-on action. It is mid-day at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bangalore. Kit bags are piled up at one end of the net area; colourful cones are placed at specific points to help bowlers with their run-ups. We are at the NCA's annual high-performance camp for under-17s, where every year the best of the country's juniors in that age group train for six weeks to upgrade their skills.

As Kaul rubs sweat on the ball and prepares to walk back, Rajinder Pal, a white-haired septuagenarian, the bowling coach for this year's batch of under-17s, chips in: "The jump before the delivery stride - you are not taking a high jump." Kaul nods and gets ready for his next delivery.

I am standing with Atul Gaikwad, a Level 3 coach who is a member of the faculty for coaches at the NCA. He tells me that instead of asking Kaul to jump higher, he would ask him to concentrate on pushing himself in the direction of the batsman when he is about to take the final delivery stride. "That way he will gain more momentum."

Later I ask Kaul whether he is confused at the advice he is getting from different coaches. He is not forthright, which is understandable. But he does mumble that he could do with "keeping things simple". What he leaves unsaid is this: there is no uniform coaching language at India's premier cricket coaching academy, which runs much like how the game in general does in India - with no particular direction.

The fundamental purpose of the NCA is to spot, groom, nurture, and develop the future of Indian cricket - to act as the supply line for the Indian national team. Unfortunately the supply has been reduced to a mere trickle, and what should be the ultimate finishing school for Indian cricket itself needs to be put in order.

The NCA turned seven in May this year, and the litany of woes is long. There is no head coach, or a set of permanent in-house specialist coaches. A research and development wing is sorely needed. Question marks abound over the duration of cricket camps. The syllabus for the coaching certification is outdated. There is also a general lack of accountability. Most glaring is the absence of a vision.

How it works - or doesn't
The NCA was the brainchild of Raj Singh Dungarpur, the former president of the BCCI. Located in the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore, the academy's premises, beneath the G stand, somewhat resemble a motel.

Infrastructure-wise the NCA is well served, with three main wickets, 24 practice wickets, three indoor wickets, a gymnasium, and a swimming pool. The dormitories are at the other end of the stadium, in the Karnataka State Cricket Association guest house.

The academy operates for five months a year, between May and September. The best 25 cricketers from each of the age groups - Under-19, Under-17, and starting this year, Under-15 - attend a conditioning camp under the supervision of specialist coaches who take them through high-performance training that is at par with the training methods of the national team.

The duration of these camps varies from between four and six weeks. At the end, each player is handed a report card that prescribes a detailed programme he needs to follow once he goes back home.

Which is where the first problem arises: once the player heads home, he can't replicate the training regimen the way he is supposed to, due to the absence of infrastructure, and more importantly, the absence of a qualified coach.

"That's a weak link," says Aunshuman Gaekwad, former India coach, and now Gujarat coach. "NCA should run throughout the year, because the boy, if he has encountered any problem, should be able to report to the coach at the NCA at any time of the year. It is not only enough to train him at the NCA and then sit back." As of now, the NCA's efforts at following up with any given trainee extend only to assembling players for two week-long camps - one before, and the second at the end of the domestic season for boys under 15 and under 17.

Players make it to the NCA based mostly on their performances in the domestic competitions, and via the zonal cricket academies (ZCAs) which organise summer camps in the five zones. The ZCAs are organised at the prominent cricket stadium in each zone every year. There is a head coach for each ZCA, but usually not the same one from one year to the next, so if a player wants to get help at some point during a season, he has no one to turn to.

Paras Mhambrey, Bengal's coach for the last two years, questions the very purpose of the ZCAs. "It takes around two months to rectify certain things about a player, but at the ZCA, which takes place during the summers, after a month the player goes back home and does nothing as it is the off season."

The need for state academies
The NCA was originally shaped on the Australian model, but where the Australian academy has now graduated into the Centre of Excellence (CoE), with a shift in focus to cricket development - encompassing research in sports sciences, and an emphasis on training coaches - from solely player development, the NCA has failed to fulfill even its basic purpose.

There is a misconception that the Australian academy is a conveyor belt that has been churning out successive generations of Australian players. The truth is, it is the six Australian state academies that have been spotting and nurturing raw youngsters, who are then sent to the CoE for further refinement. The CoE keeps in touch with the head coaches of the state academies, keeping tabs on the progress of the players.

Not one of the 27 cricket-playing states in India has its own academy. And even though the BCCI recently made it mandatory for the states to set up their academies by the end of this year, the prospects of that happening look bleak.

Frank Tyson, the former England fast bowler and biomechanics expert, who has been to the MRF Pace Foundation in Chennai and also the NCA as teaching faculty, feels it is time for an integrated approach. "You've got a structure which caters to everybody coming through, but there is no correlation between zones and the NCA, and the NCA is poor at the moment."

Lalchand Rajput, the former Mumbai opening batsman, who took over as director of coaching at the NCA in the 2005-06 season, says that once the state academies come up, co-ordination will get easier. "The NCA will monitor the [state] academies so that there is a systematic way of coaching and uniformity in coaching. That is the reason NCA has taken up education of coaches at all three levels throughout the country." A major benefit with such a system would be that the coaching patterns would be the same from the grassroots up. "All the coaches will speak the same language," as Rajput says.

Rajput has been travelling to various towns and districts to hold coaching clinics as well as to stress the importance of qualified coaches. The first thing he changed as soon as he took over at the NCA was put an end to the practice of appointing a coach from any given zone as head of the respective ZCA.

Coaching the coaches
For some time now in India, talent has been coming through from the far-flung districts, not the big cities. What is needed are capable coaches who can mine this talent well. In 2004 the NCA began conducting courses for prospective coaches at Levels 1, 2 and 3. But there are question marks over the way these coaches are being fast-tracked through the qualification process.

Balwinder Singh Sandhu, head coach at the NCA in 2001 - the only one so far - thinks that when it comes to educating coaches, standards need to be higher. During his tenure as head coach Sandhu brought the same passion to coaching that he showed during his playing days. That didn't always go down too well with his fellow coaches at the NCA. The head coach's position is as vital as that of the captain of the national team, because it is up to him to create a philosophy and set a direction that both coaches and players can understand.

Kiran More, the former chief selector, is in favour of a long tenure for the head coach. "He needs to be there for at least three or five years, so that he can plan a programme and monitor the progress of the boys."

"We need coaches with a proven track record," says Sandhu. "There are coaches, just after a month of finishing their Level 2 or 3 they start getting assignments at the NCA. How can that be possible? At that level the coach needs to work with his respective state for at least a couple of years to gain experience using his qualification, and then he can be eligible to come to the NCA. Just passing is not enough."

Mhambrey, who was on the teaching faculty for coaches once at the NCA, agrees. "I have conducted coaching courses at the NCA, and I saw people who did miserably during the course coaching youngsters at the young age-group levels."

Sandhu thinks that the head coach needs to interact regularly with the national coach. "In addition, we need four or five permanent coaches at the NCA, along with five head coaches at the zonal level, who co-ordinate with the NCA head coach."

Darren Holder, previously head coach with Maharashtra, who helped Tyson formulate the first coaching programme at the NCA in 2004, thinks that coaching is not looked at as a profession in the strict sense of the word in India. "The coaching skills in the pure sense and the coaching pedagogy are not developed," he says.

Coaches are treated as a means to an end, no more. Gaikwad, who has been with the NCA for two years now, points out that "90 per cent of coaches come with an attitude of just passing and most of them go back and implement their own techniques." It also happens that most of these wannabes are former first-class players, and like in dressing rooms during their playing days, here too, some of them can't silence their egos.

Gaikwad is doing a PhD in cricket coaching methodology in India and has been studying coaching syllabi from various countries. He has concerns about the syllabus at the NCA. "Even the Asian Cricket Council has a somewhat more advanced syllabus than us."

No second line
Holder is critical of the "us and them" mentality that is hurting Indian cricket. "The academy [CoE] in Australia works very, very closely with each of the state associations and talks to their coaches to find out what is the next tier of talent that will be coming through from that state, and assists them to produce and develop better cricketers. In India I didn't speak to anyone from the NCA during my time as head coach at Maharashtra."

Tim Nielsen, Australia's new coach, and the outgoing head coach at the CoE, speaks about the importance of talking to the states regularly. "The national selection panel picks our group of players now: they look at the short, medium, and long-term needs of Australian cricket - where we are going now, what positions are important, and where we might be in five to 10 years time. And we try and pick players who might fit the bill in that regard."

Does the NCA have similar goals? There are no clear answers. So far 29 players from various NCA batches have gone on to play for India. But why not create a pool of 25 players that the academy can develop and keep track of, and which then becomes the bank from which the national selectors can look at each time there is a need?

Dungarpur is disappointed that the academy has failed to fulfill its purpose. "The NCA is not progressive, otherwise the results would have come. And the result would be that your second line would be visible."

Clearly for Indian cricket, which is drifting rudderless at the moment, there is no second line in sight. The crying need is for a clearly defined and articulated pathway for the development of new talent in India. That is a process the NCA needs to spearhead; but first, it needs to set its own house in order.