Vijay Hazare Trophy: Coach Ramesh Powar details the Rahul Dravid touch in Mumbai's title triumph

Mumbai, March 16: Mumbai defeated Uttar Pradesh by six wickets to lift the Vijay Hazare Trophy on Sunday (March 14). And Mumbai owned the tournament in some style too, winning it without losing a single match. It was a stunning turnaround after their modest outing in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy where they had lost four of their five group stage games.

Mumbai, a team with rich legacy, landed in a messy space after the Mushtaq Ali Trophy as coach Amit Pagnis stepped down, and Ramesh Powar took charge of the team. Even for a seasoned campaigner like Powar, a former India off-spinner, multiple Ranji Trophy winner and the ex-coach of India senior women's team, the task of joining the team about 10-odd days prior to a premier competition could have been tough.

But the enormity of the task did not bother Powar. He leaned on the precious lessons learned from Rahul Dravid at the National Cricket Academy during the lockdown period to ace the challenge. Powar elaborates it in an interview to MyKhel.

Q: When you took over, the team was in bit of a turmoil and there was little time for you to plan. Mumbai cricket is known for intense pre-season planning and clarity. So, how did you use your experience as a former Mumbai player to deal with the situation?

A: Honestly speaking, I learned a lot from my stint at the National Cricket Academy last year. It's always good to have a well-laid plan but then there arise situations, like the one I encountered when I took over Mumbai this time when you don't have time, players, or the resources. This is where my learnings under Rahul Dravid at the NCA came in handy. Earlier, I didn't have the tools to think. I only knew one way of coaching, that is being aggressive. But under Dravid at the NCA, I learned that there are twenty different ways of coaching.

In the crisis and chaos, I saw an opportunity. During those six months, I learned about human behaviour and empathy. I learned how a coach can make a difference in a player's life both on and off the field. I learned how one doesn't have to go hard at a player all the time and how it's important to sometimes step back and see things from the player's perspective.

So, I was looking at different players differently. There were players like Tanush Kotian (off-spinner) and Prashant Solanki (leg-spinner) who were making their debuts, while there were seniors like Aditya Tare, Dhaval Kulkarni, Prithvi Shaw or Suryakumar Yadav who I saw as mentors. It was about man-management, something I learned recently at the NCA. I met the players individually and told them what is expected of them, not by me but by Mumbai cricket. I gave players security about their selection. I told Tare that he will play all the games, Yashaswi Jaiswal has assured a place in the XI as I saw potential in him.

Q: Can you elaborate a bit on the empathy part...

A: I was always a very aggressive player. The Mumbai dressing room that I entered had half-a-dozen international players. I thought I had to be aggressive otherwise I would be bulldozed. I carried the same aggression with me when I started coaching. But at the NCA I learned that this isn't the only way, there is direct coaching and indirect coaching.

Sometimes you don't even need to talk to the players but you can convey the message via his best friend. Sometimes you don't even have to speak about cricket, but speak about his family and that might help the player to calm down.

Earlier, I was coaching as a player but now it has changed. Now I need to give them that surety that I will hold them when they are failing. I learned all this during my conversation with senior coaches. I learned that cricket is not just about cricket but much more than that. I would have struggled if I had come into this job directly after my experience with the Indian Women's team.

But these six months at the NCA has given me the confidence that I can coach any team in the world. The stint taught me that you can be Ramesh Powar but you can't be Ramesh Powar only. So, when I entered the Mumbai dressing room I was able to connect with them and know what they wanted from themselves.

The Rahul Dravid school of coaching is to know the player better, his life, his struggles and the pressure that he is under. You have to think from the player's perspective and what he is going through.

You have to be honest with the players. Like I told Siddharth Raut, a fast bowler in the squad, that he might not get any game this season because there are three seamers and three all-rounders ahead of you. But I also told him that he is among the six top fast bowlers in Mumbai and so he should continue the hard work to be ready as and when the chance comes.

Q: And the man-management part...

A: The prime example I would give is Shaw. I never tried to tell him about his bat swing or head position. I had a chat with him and asked him what he is feeling. Shaw told me that he worked on his flaws and now has an idea about how to improve. He told me that he is doing drills in his room and visualizing. He said it will take some time and I was fine with it.

When we landed in Jaipur we had to undergo four days of quarantine and during this period he was doing drills in his room and by the time we had our first practice session he was ready. Rest is history. What I was doing was not coaching him, but speaking to him to understand his mindset.

So, sometimes no coaching is also coaching. I was only giving feedback after the practice session and that too not too technical. He felt that he had got too much humiliation after what had happened in Australia. He accepted that somethings went wrong and he needed to correct them. The only way he could convert all this negativity into positivity was by scoring runs and he did that. He had that self-realisation, and so my role ended there.

Captaincy also helped him because then he was not thinking just about his batting but about the well-being of others too. After batting he will give throw-downs, once back in the hotel he would call players to his room for lunch or dinner. I didn't interfere in any of that. I just took a step back and let him do things he was comfortable with. At nets, I gave him two new ball bowlers and he was happy.

Q: You spoke about two young spinners. Mumbai cricket hasn't had an off-spinner and a leggie in the mix for a very long time. Can you talk about them a bit?

A: During the first few net sessions, I had no idea what to expect from them. I had not seen too much of them prior to that. So, I just told them to do certain things and which they did. In fact in Jaipur, I apologised to Solanki for not rating him too much after our first few meetings. We got them in at the right moment. We played Solanki in the game against Puducherry, a relatively weak team, to help him build his confidence. We played Kotian directly in the knock-out games as I thought he was our surprise package. He bowled really well in the game against Karnataka.

Q: Things would have changed when Iyer, Surya, and Thakur left on India duty. How did you manage then?

A: We had to make some tactical tweaks. We decided to play Tare at three, Shams Mulani at four, Aman Khan and Shivam Dube as all-rounders, followed by Sarfaraz Khan and then the four bowlers. I made it very clear to Tare that he had to play a greater role in the team and can't just be satisfied as a keeper. I had seen Alam at U-23 level and had confidence in his batting.

We knew that we don't have a replacement for the quality that Iyer or Yadav have. So, we decided that we might not get 330-340 in the knock-out games but we may get 270-80. But we had the bowlers who can defend. Two pure fast bowlers and two fast bowling all-rounders gave us that confidence along with three spinners in Alam, Kotian and Solanki. Luckily, Shaw carried the batting on his shoulders and then Tare played that blinder in the final.