15

KNIGHT RIDERS
AND THE WORLD

Soccer has Manchester United, baseball the New York Yankees and cricket can have the Kolkata Knight Riders. Manchester United and the Yankees are sporting organisations recognised and supported throughout the world. I see no reason why the Knight Riders cannot match strides with these great sporting franchises.

The vision of our franchise is to establish player and community links in places such as Australia, Dubai and South Africa. We took our first steps towards achieving this goal when we spread our wings in September 2008 and took the Knight Riders to my home city of Brisbane for our inaugural international playing and coaching camp at the Centre of Excellence. It was an invaluable life and cricketing experience for the young players in our squad.

We played six T20 matches at that camp, but we did more than train and play cricket. Our camp involved leadership and education sessions and a promotional event on the Sunshine Coast, north of the city.

So the vision of a Kolkata-based Knight Riders academy with tentacles around the world is the model our franchise aspires to achieve. Manchester United and the Yankees reach around the world to identify new talent, then bring that talent through their respective feeder systems and programs.

Each year in Australia the Manchester United Soccer School is attended by youths in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. They are taught not only how to become better soccer players, but how to become good people as well. Each session would end with every child on the training park shaking hands with each other and the coaches who have guided them through the day. It is about manners and developing people as well as improving soccer skills.

At the end of their Australian tour, a lucky dip took place and a girl from Brisbane won a week at Manchester United’s elite academy. It was to be the trip of a lifetime for the teenager. This is a concept I will strive to emulate at the Knight Riders.

But first the franchise must gain a foothold in India. The first steps toward achieving this ambition were taken in August and September 2008, with a four-stop talent hunt tour of India.

A whistlestop visit to Mumbai’s rain-sodden Goregaon Sports Club gave me the opportunity to see 125 aspiring youngsters. Two days later the talent-hunt caravan moved to Delhi where, in conjunction with the Vijay Dahiya Academy, we viewed 465 aspiring Knight Rider players. Then it was on to Ahmedabad where I, along with a group of local coaches headed by Vijay Patel, glimpsed another 85 young lads. The road trip finished in Kolkata with a quick evaluation of the Bengal cricket squad.

In Mumbai we didn’t have access to a cricket ground and had to make do with asphalt basketball courts. Coming out of the monsoon season, it had rained so much that it was all we could do to construct makeshift wickets using crushed bricks and dirt. But the kids loved having a chance to show their wares, even if it was only for a few balls at the batting or bowling crease or in the field.

We began in the early morning and continued until dark. Knight Riders team director Joy Bhattacharya and local coaches acted as interpreters while we put the kids through their paces in catching and ground fielding on day one, then batting and bowling on day two. We marked them on their high and low catching skills, and back-and front-foot batting. Participants were aged from 14 to their 30s. Bowlers had two or three deliveries to make an impression. I’m not sure that we got it completely right but it did give us a look at an incredible mix of people, from the enthusiastic but unpolished to those who had only just missed out on IPL contracts.

What I was looking for in this situation was something a little different. Batters wanted to show off their techniques and how good they were at not getting out, but I wanted to see if they could hit the ball. We saw some really interesting players and took some notes back with us to Knight Riders headquarters. I believe we identified 10 to 12 players who might not play in 2009 or 2010 but could prove themselves further down the track. The other highlight was seeing the smiles on the faces of the kids and their parents.

We set up a bowling machine, fixed at a pace that was way too fast for some kids. True to Indian form, they would just smile and wait for the next ball to whiz past them. Nothing went smoothly of course. We suffered the inevitable power breakdowns, causing the bowling machine to stop or – worse – slow down, only to send an extra fast delivery when the power surged.

That’s India. Everyone just deals with it because they are used to it. The people are inventive and creative because they have to be. What a westerner would see as strange or unsatisfactory circumstances, they view as normal, and set about fixing what needs fixing. It might not be the best solution, but it will usually work. That’s India: somehow it works.

A lot of the kids were what we in Australia call ‘chirpers’. They had a lot to say and would try to get our attention by telling us who they knew and how they’d played. Most of them were all talk, however, as we found out when we put them to the test.

We saw a couple of kids aged about 15 who could bowl with either hand, ME Sanuth and Vikash Chauhan. We signed Sanuth on a two-year contract as a development player. He bowls right-arm off-spin and left-arm orthodox (he’s better with the right arm) as well as throwing with both arms. Over time, we will see more such unorthodox cricketers and we will encourage them, as we see them as the future.

The aims of our inaugural Indian-focused talent search were threefold. Initially, we wanted to find three to five players to join our touring squad to the Brisbane camp later that year. Secondly, the franchise wanted to find around 20 to 40 boys who could be offered a place at a development coaching program beginning in 2009. And finally, it was our hope that we would ensure the Knight Riders were not only part of the Kolkata community, but part of the entire Indian community.

Our search for player depth and talent was well timed, because our groundbreaking academy tour to Queensland was depleted by eight players on India A commitments. In addition, the Cricket Association of Bengal decided, at the last minute, to hold their Knight Rider-contracted players back from attending Queensland’s Centre of Excellence because they believed it was important for their entire squad to be available for pre-season training under a new coaching regime. So what was going to be a trickle of young players into our squad bound for Queensland became a flood.

The Brisbane training camp and a series of T20 matches against Queensland were just the start. Our big picture incorporates establishing major sporting links in a variety of international ports, of which Brisbane would be one. The theory is if we cannot bring people from those overseas communities to an Indian-based academy, then we will bring an academy to them.

Initially our international academies might simply be skills-based, focusing on cricket. But there is no reason why our academies have to be exclusively cricket-oriented – for example, could it not one day evolve into a Knight Riders soccer or field hockey clinic?

The Knight Riders home academy would be in India. It would incorporate a sports medical centre as part of the academy. I see it being available to the entire community, not just the elite. The Kolkata facility could involve everyone from doctors to trainers, and provide programs to young children through education services involving parents and teachers. The academy could be a place to educate athletes on nutrition, develop their mental potential and help them with sporting skill acquisition.

Jon Deeble, who as well as being Australia’s baseball coach is Australasian talent scout for the Boston Red Sox, was a guest at our Queensland training camp. He believes our franchise goals are attainable, and he outlined three steps to making the program a success.

‘Firstly, find talent at the cheapest price. Secondly, develop that talent, and thirdly, win. That is how we work. It (overseas academies) is a great concept for cricket. We believe the Boston Red Sox are pretty good at scouting. And it is the same concept (for cricket). The way to do it is to go out, pluck them and bring them in.’

As we did at our camps, the Red Sox put structures in place to grade potential recruits on the different facets of the game – namely running, hitting, throwing, power and fielding. ‘And what we do from there is teach them to play,’ Jon said. ‘I have no doubt the Knight Riders are on the right track.’

The IPL’s initial approach to me came in January 2008, months after the ICL made overtures. Lalit Modi, who was then chairman of the marketing sub-committee at the BCCI, sounded me out.

‘I will be sending the details of the coaching role to you in the next couple of hours, though I know that as coach you are in charge and if there are responsibilities that you would like to detail for us that you would want in your hands, please don’t hesitate to let us know. The franchise and team will be looking to you for your experience and expertise,’ wrote Modi’s personal assistant, Radhika Moolraj.

I replied: ‘I would love to be part of it, to be in at the grassroots and to be heavily involved in its future development.’

I had ambitions beyond merely coaching a T20 franchise. I told Modi I wanted to develop the Knight Riders into ‘the greatest sporting franchise in the world’. As part of that vision, I wanted to research and trial all the current best-practice systems from sports franchises around the world over the next three years in order to have the best systems, the right people, and the best culture to achieve the vision. I did warn Modi that the Knight Riders’ on-field success might be limited over the initial period of the IPL as we built up the right personnel on and off the field.

Ultimately, I believed the franchise would triumph, while also helping young Indian players graduate to national teams. I wanted the Kolkata Knight Riders to be the franchise other IPL organisations aimed to emulate.

Through our training camps in both India and Australia, the Knight Riders are trying to develop a talent identification system. We had 58 players at our camp in January 2009 and managed to identify a couple of players we think have the potential to make it in the IPL.

It is ambitious, particularly given the chaotic nature of India. Can we impose a system on this chaos? Given its resources, Indian cricket should have been stronger over the years, but there is no system. The country operates under a kind of chaos management, making me wonder if a western system will work. That’s what we’re trying to put in place with the Knight Riders, and if we can I feel we will be incredibly successful.

But the system I want is foreign to the country in which we’re operating. That is the conundrum of the entire IPL and its growth ambitions. Will a system emerge that can be put in place in the USA, Australia and other countries?

We hope that what we’re doing will pay off in our third and fourth years. In my mind, I took the job on for five years and my thinking works within that time frame. I devised a theme for each of our first five years, as follows:

First year – orientation.

Second year – exploration.

Third year – development.

Fourth year – capitalisation.

Fifth year – expansion.

If we do all the right things we will be successful. But we don’t expect it to happen overnight. The question is: if we don’t have early success, will the owners and fans have the patience to see out our plan?

We have not nominated a captain, which has proved controversial with Ganguly supporters. On match day we will have a designated on-field captain as per the rules of cricket but we will operate things a little differently. Assistant coach Matthew Mott will be one of the ‘captains’ controlling the batting order and relaying messages on to the field as needed. The only issue is we can’t slow the game down. But given the frenetic pace of the game there is scope for an off-field person to play a greater role, making strategic, tactical and player decisions.

We want to experiment with this in 2009, possibly even employing fielding and bowling leaders. We want to get to the stage coach Ric Charlesworth and the Australian women’s hockey team did, where there was a nominated captain but all the players were leaders.

The longer the game, the less impact a coach will have, but I foresee increased recognition of the role of coaching in cricket – particularly when it comes to the shorter game. My approach has provoked mixed reactions, with some heavy criticism coming from expected bastions of cricket conservatism and outmoded traditionalism. Of course, these individuals may prove correct, but as John Maynard Keynes said in 1935: ‘The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.’

I have come to the conclusion that I must adapt to the Indian chaos, but I also hope that IPL and Knight Riders authorities will see the value in my thinking. Time will tell if my approach of trying to develop players will work, or whether we should just treat players as commodities, and buy and sell them to suit our needs.