Why it is time for India to opt for an Indian coach

Why it is time for India to opt for an Indian coach: Cricket is a game where the coach plays a vital role in the overall welfare of the team. The job of a coach starts right from motivating the players, finding out their strengths and shortcomings, altering the technical drawbacks of the player as and when needed, and give crucial advice whenever necessary.

The job of a coach is a tedious one and needless to say if you are the coach of the Indian cricket team. Arguably the toughest coaching job on the planet, the Indian cricket coach needs to fulfill the hopes and expectations of a billion plus passionate fans. Of course, cricket isn’t a game like football where the coach does the job of selecting the team, assigning roles and all. But still in cricket the job of the coach shouldn’t in any way be undermined.

It is as challenging as any coaching job in any sport because of the hopes invested upon them and the amount of pressure that they have to withstand. In a country of over 1 billion people with so much craze and zeal for cricket, and with the list of legends that the country has produced in the game; they we would obviously expect an Indian to coach the Indian team. But surprisingly it hasn’t been the case for so many years now.

The Indian cricket board BCCI has always picked non-Indians for the coaching job. While it has paid rich dividends sometimes, the question arises that isn’t it time that we find a person from our own country to do the job rather than a foreigner because of certain unexplained impediments. I will brief those in this article.

Firstly it helps break the language barrier. Knowing things in your mother tongue is the best way to learn and that would help the players who don’t understand and speak English pick things up better and execute them appropriately. Former India and Kings XI Punjab bowling coach Joe Dawes cited language barrier as the reason for his team’s miserable performance. So, the language barrier really is a serious issue that remains unrecognized or simply not taken into account seriously.

Secondly, there is more than enough knowledge in our home soil. Why go for two in a bush when you have a bird in hand? We have guys like Rahul Dravid, the wall who redefined the art of stonewalling tactics, we have the legend Sachin Tendulkar in our own country, we have Dada who was a successful captain in his days. Then there is Anil Kumble, one of the best spinners to ever play test cricket. In a larger perspective we have all the ingredients that constitute to a wonderful recipe, needed for the making of good coach.

We have seen it in the IPL how a team like KXIP who were in a chaotic mess suddenly resurrected themselves as soon as Sanjay Bangar took over as the coach. We have seen how Rahul Dravid has been instrumental in shaping youngsters like Ajinkya Rahane, Sanju Samson, Deepak Hooda, and others at Rajasthan Royals with the IPL.

Other than that a list of international teams have now started to opt for home grown coaches. Ottis Gibson- the current West Indies coach is a West Indian, South Africa’s coach Gary Kirsten is also a former South African cricketer, the current Pakistani coach Waqar Younis is a Pakistan cricket legend, also the current New Zealand coach is Mike Hesson who also hails from the same country.

While all the other nations are opting for members of their own country why has a country with a golden cricketing legacy always opted for an outsider? It really is a question that the BCCI should ask itself. We have had foreign coaches in: John Wright, Greg Chappell, Gary Kirsten, and Duncan Fletcher whereas guys like Mohinder Amarnath, Kapil Dev have been neglected.

We saw devastating results on appointing a coach like Greg Chappell. Chappell brought disrepute to the nation and all his decisions were never in good taste thereby paving way for India’s first round exit from 2007 WC. Agreed some of these overseas coaches have been hugely successful but while every country has played under a coach of their nation, it is a thing worth discussing that we haven’t been able to find a guy at home to coach our team effectively.

There are many other examples from other sports as well. Indian ace badminton star Saina Nehwal became an Olympic bronze medal winner under an Indian coach, Puellela Gopichand. PT Usha was coached by OM Nambiar an Indian. All these examples seem to convey that it is wiser and more appreciable if your coach is from the native country. While saying this I’m afraid that one might infer that I fall under the category which are against the appointment of foreign coaches. Which is absolutely not the case.

This article is based just a reminder, to the authorities that appointing a foreign cricket coach for a talent-rich nation like India does seem a bit unnecessary and as something that doesn’t give an opportunity to the Indian wise heads to use their experience and knowledge towards the betterment of cricket in the country. Now that Ravi Shastri is the interim coach of the Indian team, we as passionate Indian cricket team fans sincerely hope that the BCCI would prefer former player from the country rather than opting for a foreign coach. We have the best cricketing brains with unmatched grey matter in our own country so why search for a foreign coach? Seems reasonable, isn’t it?