National Cricket Academy has revamped the coaching manual, under Rahul Dravid’s stewardship, which now comprises “corporate classes” for aspiring coaches on tackling off-field issues, including selection pressures from various quarters.
Recently, a batch of distinguished former first-class cricketers attended the BCCI’s Level-2 coaching course at National Cricket Academy and also appeared for the theory and practical examination.
National Cricket Academy’s Coaching Module Tweaked To Make It More Appealing For Modern Coaches
While the coaching module at National Cricket Academy has been tweaked to make it more appealing for modern coaches, what came as a pleasant surprise was the introduction of a “corporate problem-solving class”, where the incumbents were asked to find methods of troubleshooting while dealing with multiple off-the-field stakeholders.
“The course has been devised by former Mumbai seamer Kshemal (Waingankar), who is an MBA and has a corporate background. I have never attended a class like this but it was very unique and helped me broaden my horizon,” a distinguished first-class cricketer, who attended the course at National Cricket Academy, said on the condition of anonymity.
“Well, it was about making us understand the difference between ‘bargaining’ and ‘negotiation’. We were told that we don’t need to solve a problem but it needs to be checked what are the trouble-shooting methods that we deploy (approach) in a critical situation,” he said.
“The course instructor (Kshemal) picked two coaches – Person A and Person B. Person A was told that he is the ‘coach’ and Person B was told that he is the ‘selector’. He gave both of them a worksheet, he said while elaborating an example.
“The assignment was the person (B) who has been made the selector has to include three players in the team. He has pressure from various stakeholders it could be a state association, someone else… Now Person A, who is the coach, knows that he can only include two guys in the team and one in playing XI.”
Both Persons A and B were asked to display their “negotiation” skills where one needs to push his case and the other needs to stall it.
“The motive was to check how they deal with a situation like this. Who all does the coach involve? Is it his assistant coaches? Is it the captain? Or does he take help from a performance analyst with data? How does the selector convince the coach? Can he convince his fellow selectors or take help of administrators? It’s not about who gets his way but how one approaches the solution?” the player said.
All aspiring Level 2 coaches have to correct at least one player. While the Level-2 course is complete, all the aspirants now go back to their respective cities and, in the next three months, will have to at least work with one player and prepare a project report.
“This is also an interesting part. All of us will have to pick a player and make a complete video analysis of his bowling or batting depending upon our area of expertise. Then we prepare a project report on what specifics we are working on. After we have worked on corrective measures, we will again have to prepare a video of changes we have made. Then only our Level 2 course will be complete,” said another player.
BCCI had invited applications for batting, bowling (fast & spin), and fielding coaches at National Cricket Academy. The deadline to apply for these positions is September 10, as per the official website. The age limit of the candidates at the National Cricket Academy is 60 years.
The development comes as BCCI has decided not to renew the annual contracts of as many as 11 coaches at the National Cricket Academy at Bengaluru. Last year, the BCCI had decided not to renew their contracts which includes retired cricketers- Ramesh Powar, Sujith Somsundar, Subroto Banerjee, Hrishikesh Kanitkar, and SS Das.
After a brief period of inactivity due to COVID-19, BCCI is in fully functional mode again. It recently conducted a level 2 hybrid course spanning eight days for cricket coaches. It included former India cricketers Irfan Pathan, Yusuf Pathan, Abhishek Nayar, Ashok Dinda, Devang Gandhi, Naman Ojha, and Parveez Rasool.
Rahul Dravid Attends Classes With All Batches
Rahul Dravid doesn’t take classes, but he attends classes with all batches. What has amazed a lot of these players is the fact National Cricket Academy head Rahul Dravid always makes it a point to sit with the batches and also attend the lectures, taken by the likes of Sujith Somasundar, Apurv Desai, Rajib Datta and Kshemal Waingankar.
“In fact when we were shown videos of players and asked to offer solutions, even Rahul bhai would join us and try to figure out the problem. He would tell us that he still feels like a student and the day he stops learning, that will be the end of it,” another first-class player, who has played against Dravid, said.
“He told us that as coaches, we shouldn’t go on a fault-finding mission when a player comes to us. Rather than trying to nitpick and find faults, we should see what are the good qualities in that player and how we can make them better. The coaching manual in NCA is now more player-centric,” he said.
Some of the well-known past and present players who attended the course are Robin Bisht, Zakaria Zufri, Prabhanjan Mullick, Uday Kaul, Sagar Jogiyani, Sarabjeet Singh, Arindam Das, Saurashis Lahiri, Ranadeb Bose, KB Pawan, and Connor Williams.
Rahul Dravid has re-applied for the post of Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy and is the only person so far to file his nomination for the position.