Kohli expects smooth ride

Tribune news service

Mumbai, July 19

Indian captain Virat Kohli, on the eve of the forthcoming tour of Sri Lanka, said that the previous tour to that country, when he led India to a 2-1 Test series win in 2015, gave him and the team the confidence that they can win abroad. 

He also said that having worked with head coach Ravi Shastri before, he doesn’t need to understand “anything new” working with him. “We have worked together from 2014 to16. So there should be that kind of understanding (between us)... That you can also understand,” Kohli said. “So I don’t think that I need to understand anything new about (the coaching staff) in this scenario. We had worked earlier also and so we know what’s expected. So I don’t think there is any effort to understand (is required) as we have worked earlier also.” 

This comment from Kohli seems to be a response to Sourav Ganguly’s observation made earlier this month that Kohli needs to understand that different coaches work in different ways. “Virat will need to understand how coaches operate,” Ganguly had said. 

Back to 2015

“We do have a culture that’s been created in the team to win whatever Test matches, Test series we play,” Kohli said. “Losing the first Test was a shock to us, but the way we bounced back was only because of the team culture that was created at that stage where even the less experienced players — if you had compared us to Sri Lanka, the number of Tests was not even close — showed more belief in their abilities to win from any situation and that really turned our mindset around.”

“From then on, you can see the results we have had so far,” he said. “We have an away series coming up and same mindset would apply now what we started way back in 2015.”

Shastris, Kumbles will come and go: Shastri

“These Ravi Shastris, Anil Kumbles will come and go. The fabric of Indian cricket will remain and the credit should go to everyone who has participated in the Indian team over the last three years,” said Shastri, the new head coach, today. “If they are No. 1 today, it is the efforts they have put in over the three-year period and they deserve the credit. People like us will come and go.”

These are remarkably sensible comments from Shastri, but also, they’re the comments of a man who’s had his way. After getting the coach’s job (after being rejected last year, when Kumble was selected), Shastri has got assistant coaches of his choice: Sanjay Bangar and Bharat Arun. Due to these two choices, the Indian cricket board (BCCI) had to make a U-turn because BCCI had earlier named Zaheer Khan as the team’s bowling consultant and Rahul Dravid as batting consultant on Test tours.

Today, Shastri also explained why he was so keen to have Arun — who played 2 Tests and 4 ODIs for India —  to coach the bowlers. “Look at his track record. It’s outstanding,” Shastri said. “He’s been a coach for 15 years and has been part of the system right from the A teams, junior World Cup teams. He knows these boys better than I do. If you look at the 2015 World Cup (Arun was the bowling coach then), India took 77 out of the possible 80 wickets. If Bharat Arun’s name was someone else who played a lot of Tests, you would have put him on top of the tree.”

So Arun would be with the team on the tour to Sri Lanka, but what about Zaheer? Originally, BCCI had announced that he was the full-time bowling coach; however, four days ago, BCCI announced that Zaheer’s appointment as bowling consultant would also be tour-specific. This puts a question mark over Zaheer.

Back to team

After around eight weeks of unseemly tussle over who the head coach would be, perhaps it’s time to bury the past and focus on the team, as Shastri wants to do. Shastri, who was India’s Team Director until April 2016, said he had also matured over the last few weeks and was not coming back to the job with any “baggage”.

“So mine will be a refresh button that will be pushed,” Shastri said. “I carry on from where I left. I don’t come with any baggage. The team has done exceedingly well over three years, and they are the people who deserve the credit, more than anyone else.” 

With inputs from agencies