The art of the turnaround
Chappell's the visionary, Frazer's the executor. Anand Vasu sits India's back-room duo down for a chat to find out how they've brought the side back up to speed
Chappell I think we are, by and large. There are guys who are a bit tired, or things aren't going as well for them as they like, and they wonder why we're doing a few extra things. Some of the guys have been a bit tired with the extra workload we put on them in the tours of Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka, where we felt we had the chance to push some players a bit harder. But everyone has either experienced for themselves, or seen first-hand, the benefits of what we're doing. So I think they've all pretty much got on board.
Chappell A lot of the drills that Ian has developed have to do with stimulating the nervous system, the emotions, the mind. From my personal experience, there's a limit to what you can teach. All you can do is create an environment in which people can learn. In a lot of cases problems of technique originate from problems in the mind. Ian's great strength is identifying these problems and fixing them through training programmes. We've come to the understanding, through our research, that you can't teach someone to be better. But you can design training programmes that will make them think in a way that will make them better cricketers.
Frazer Let's say a player is classified as being weak outside the off. That builds on the mind and when he trains he just tries to get better at playing outside the off. This leads to frustration, and a fear creeps in. He becomes cautious in the way he plays. At this level obviously he's got the ability to play. It is how he approaches the game day-in day-out that's key. We spend a lot of time talking to players and telling them that they have a choice about how they approach each day. How they choose to view a situation after a couple of failures, or how they choose to view things after success even. I think that's what coaching at this level is all about.
Chappell It's about observation. It's about recognising where the problem begins. Coaching cannot be about dealing with the end result. You might have snicked one because your feet were not in the right position, but if you only address the end result - the feet being in the wrong place - it's like using band-aids to treat cancer. Batsmen get out because they've been deceived by the bowler or deceived themselves by planning to do a certain thing that the bowler does not allow them to do by putting the ball in a different area. As a coach you're going to frustrate a player if you're sorting out his footwork when the real problem is elsewhere. This is one thing I learned when I was coach of South Australia - there is a definite limit to how much a coach can teach a player, but there is no limit to how much a player can learn from a coach.
Frazer Often a player will be very good in one situation. On one sort of wicket someone may play perfectly through the off side. At this level you'd think if someone could play a shot perfectly once, they should be able to repeat it at will. But situations are always changing, and in coaching you have to be giving players a different repertoire of conditions to succeed in.
Frazer In batting there are some variations - pitch, ball, height of bowler, position of delivery on crease, background, time of day, match situation. In bowling there's run-up, ball, position at crease, dew. And in fielding, the possibilities are endless. We ask ourselves, "How can they train so they have an experience in the subconscious to draw from?" We try and make them think not of the conscious mechanical movements, but through exercises and drills we try and make them experience it so they have the awareness when they come across it in a match. A guy who has done this well is Ric Charlesworth, the hockey player.
Chappell We often slow things down to get the basics right, then speed up to real time. These guys are elite athletes. If a ball is thrown at them at the same speed, they can hit it with their eyes closed. But when we slowed things down and mixed up the pace, they were forced to use their feet. The bottom half of the body sets up good batting. The hands and the arms come in last. By slowing it down we got them to use their feet and set things up properly to play the shot they wanted to play.
Chappell Lots of teams work on the opposition. We spend more time dealing with ourselves, working out the things we need to do to be successful. A lot of the players have commented that they've found the team meetings stimulating - because it's relevant to them. We're spending a lot of time talking cricket with the guys. That used to happen a lot in the past where the players would sit around after play and talk about the game. A lot of knowledge was passed on from older players to younger players through those informal chats.
Chappell He's very good at breaking down barriers. Some of the players didn't quite know how to approach me because of my reputation as a player. Ian's been very kind to tell them about my failings and failures (laughs) and bring me down to manageable proportions! There have been a few tantrums and Ian has been able to deal with those well. I wouldn't have liked to have taken the job on without someone of his knowledge and experience. He's a researcher at heart and I think in some ways that's how he views this, as a hands-on PhD in coaching.
Chappell Cricket is essentially about solving problems. When the bowler delivers the ball, he is posing a problem which the batsman has to solve. Great bowlers always talk about how their job is to ask questions repeatedly, which the batsman has to answer - till the bowler comes up with one question that can't be answered. Kumbles talks about it, Warne talks about it, Murali mentioned it the other day. Talking batting with Rahul or Sachin is the same. Young batsmen or experienced ones, the doubts and the fears are the same. Take Sachin. He has such a creative mind - sometimes I think it's too creative. He made a fascinating comment. He said something like, "experience is a two-edged sword"; it's good up to a point but you know all of the things that can go wrong and think about them...
Chappell We do, from time to time, experiment. But we do that away from the main arena. When we started here people told us, India are no good under pressure, they can't chase, they can't be fit - all negatives. We had a choice of whether to listen to that and let it take us down. We deliberately said we won't worry about the outcome for a bit. We'll give players opportunities in different circumstances to test themselves. If you look at it from the right perspective and have some success, just think what it's going to do for your confidence.
Chappell In the Challengers I wanted as many of the guys from the Indian side as possible to play. The only way we could fit everyone in was that someone who was not an opener had to open the batting. I went to Irfan and offered it to him and he nearly knocked me over in the rush to accept. That epitomises the fellow. He's so enthusiastic and he so wants to learn and get better that he'll try anything. He tried it and it worked and that became infectious within the group. We used him at No. 3 against Sri Lanka. We knew that the Sri Lankans expected us to play in a certain way because we had already played that way. Here was an opportunity to strategise. It was not an experiment. He has a technique that's pretty reasonable and he can keep good bowling out. Equally he has the ability and the confidence to back himself if they bowl in his areas. He certainly fitted the profile of a person we could use up the order. When I spoke to Rahul he warmed to the idea of challenging guys to do things they weren't used to, to increase flexibility in the team, increase the confidence.
Chappell We implemented these strategies, which people called experiments, because we knew from our experience in training that these guys could do what was being asked of them. The odds on these strategies coming off was very high. That's what you do when you're batting - you try and keep the odds in your favour. When you decide to up the rate of scoring, you try and hit a ball that's a foot outside the off over cover, not through fine leg. That's minimising risk. As a bowler, you wonder whether bowling a bouncer in a run-chase is a good idea, because it could be hit for six. But equally it could get you a wicket. So it's all about weighing up the risks. I bridle at the word experiment, because we were not experimenting at all. We were taking opportunities to strategise, to confuse the opposition, force them to use bowlers in a different way, throw their plans out of kilter.
Chappell I don't think you can say it's black and white. What Rahul and I are building is a relationship. What the team and the coaching staff are building is a relationship. On game days he's the leader. We're support staff. I get a lot of credit for things I'm not doing. As support staff we come up with ideas and take it to the leadership group, especially the captain. He then considers things. If he doesn't agree with something he says it to me. Take how it went with Irfan here in Delhi (second Test). When we had to bat in the second innings, we thought we had not been positive enough first up, when we batted in the first innings. And we thought we might do something to change that. But if we had sent a Dhoni or a Yuvraj up the order and lost him early, that would have been losing out on a player in his key position. But with Pathan it was again a case of weighing up the risks. I spoke to Rahul and he thought about it, and we mutually agreed on it. That's how it should be, because he's the one that's going to wear the wins and losses against his name, not me. If I feel strongly about something, I will take it to him, but he has the final say and I respect that totally because I've been in that position.
Frazer I think one of the great things that has come out of all this is Rahul. What he did in the Delhi Test says a lot. In the first innings he took it on himself to open. He was far from well. But he wanted to make a statement to the team, and to the opposition.
Chappell We needed the shake-up. The situation wasn't working. The record in recent times was abysmal. If we kept doing the same things we would get the same things. Certain things are not acceptable in my book. I felt very strongly that the team needed that catharsis to come though stronger. There was a chance that things could go backward; there was an even better chance that things would improve. The risk was necessary and worth taking. The timing of it was never going to be good. I've been around a long time and one of the advantages of having lived as long as I have is that you go through a lot of experiences. I've played in, coached and selected teams and seen what's worked and what hasn't. In some areas you can't compromise. You can't say we'll cover this problem the best we can and try and get by.
Frazer The team knew what was going on. What we needed to get through to them was that there was a better way. If they chose a better way, then a lot of the issues that were external would go away. One of the things we said was, "Control the controllables".
Anand Vasu is assistant editor of Cricinfo