Dads, who are also coaches tend to be very critical about their kid’s performances. An excellent example of it is of Cheteshwar Pujara. He is currently the batting mainstay of Indian Test team. The entire batting revolves around his gentle, calm and immense batting talent. He can bat out sessions after sessions without any hint of a problem and churn out runs in heaps.
Seven years into the Test career and with close to 51 Tests and over 4000 runs under his belt, Pujara, now is hailed as the new “wall” of Team India.
But, ask his father, Arvind Pujara, about his son’s achievements, he would still sound unsatisfied and find out flaws.
It’s not because he happens to be an overly demanding parent, it is due to his role of being the childhood coach to the Saurashtra star. It was under his guidance that Pujara learnt and honed his batting skills. Therefore, quite naturally, his biggest admirer, as well as the critics of Pujara, happens to be his father.
This entire story also reflects the life of another budding cricketer– India under-19 Shubham Gill – who also happens to share a “parent – coach” relation with his father, Lakhwinder Gill.
Waiting for his father’s Appreciation
Gill is fresh from registering two centuries during the tour of England and top-scored with 278 runs in ODI series. But, despite all these knocks, he is yet revealed how he is yet to hear the words, “well played” from his father, who is also his first coach.
The right-handed batsman, who played four ODIs in the series, scored 147 off 127 balls with 19 hits to the fence and two sixes to win Brighton ODI by 169 runs recently.
“So far, dad was not satisfied with any of my performances. After my 147 in the third ODI, he wanted to know why I got out. He wanted me to score a double hundred. I don’t know when he will congratulate me by saying ‘well played’… maybe after my first double ton in international cricket,” Punjab’s Shubman told mid-day yesterday.
However, he feels lucky to have a passionate father who dedicated his life to mentoring him right from his childhood.
“He is my coach. He knows all my strengths and weaknesses. We have nets at our residence along with bowling machine.
“When I’m home in Mohali, I face around 500 throw downs daily. When I get home, he will watch footage of each of my innings. He will analyse my knocks and will point out how I played a particular ball or left a specific one,” said Shubman, 17, who scored 102 in Worcester Youth Test.”