OPINION
Follow UsHindsight is a wonderful thing. Perhaps more wonderful when we can use that to picture the past in a more prudent manner. Ramesh Powar’s appointment as the Indian Women’s Team Head Coach, on Thursday (May 13), replacing WV Raman, is sure to bring back memories of the 2018 edition of the Women’s T20 World Cup and the subsequent drama that played out in the public gaze. However, strictly from a cricketing context, it is more important to look back at the moment when things were not that messy.
"Luckily the youngsters are very fearless so I hope it changes the whole perception of pressure for them," Powar had said just ahead of the 2018 T20 World Cup.
“There are youngsters who will react differently now to pressure. This team is more about dominance rather than just competing. They are looking to dominate everything, every situation. That's where the pressure will be off. We've prepared for that.”
It was a revealing statement about Powar’s outlook towards modern-day cricket, which was rather complicated under Tushar Arothe, the long-standing coach who the former Mumbai spinner had replaced back in July 2018. Powar had seen the youngsters as ideally suited for the demands of T20 cricket while identifying the likes of Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami to be the perfect fit for the longer versions of the game.
He stood by the words till the time he was in charge and even dared to take the unpopular call of dropping talismanic Raj for the semi-final game. For some, the decision made perfect cricketing sense, but in the age of social media storms, Powar was projected as a Bollywood Super-Villain when India lost. The decision was viewed as a motivated call to defame a giant of Indian cricket.
It was not that Powar had lost the dressing room either. Smriti Mandhana and Harmanpreet Kaur - easily far more important to the T20 set-up than Raj - then swiftly took the issue and urged the board to stick with the Mumbaikar. Just a month before the incident, senior batter Veda Krishnamurthy had eulogized Powar, stressing how the communication had developed and how the players were asked to speak out more under his tenure.
“The best part about Ramesh is that he is getting everyone to talk. Communication has improved. He has asked us to speak out more. If there's anything running in our mind, he wants us to openly have a conversation about it, which wasn't the case earlier. Players are sitting and discussing what their role should be in the team and what they should actually do. There's a lot of cricket being spoken. That's the one thing he's been stressing on ever since he joined us, he wants everyone to come together and work towards it,” Krishnamurthy told ESPNcricinfo.
Yet the Committee of Administrators, led by Vinod Rai, decided to take the escape route to appoint WV Raman through a designed Ad-Hoc Committee. We will never know if that was, in fact, a result of his tussle between Rai and Diana Edulji, but no one can argue that things could have been simpler and clearer.
In leading the side to the T20 World Cup final, Raman did what he was asked and then some more, but who emerged as the winner in the entire process, is hard to tell. Powar, riding on the momentum of coaching Mumbai to their fourth Vijay Hazare Trophy title, is back to lead the women once again. Process, they would tell you.
The Powar-shift?
Dressing room talks are more about conjectures and motivated leaks. In the Powar-Mithali saga, it played out in public. The blame game, the letters, the leaks made everyone forget what India had achieved under Powar’s stewardship. As the BCCI Press Release noted, “It was under him that India qualified for the semi-final of the ICC T20 Women’s World Cup in 2018 and also won 14 T20 matches in a row.”
Now Mithali is retired from T20 cricket, yet holds the captaincy in the other two formats. With the Indian team set to travel England for an all-format series in less than a week time, it isn’t clear yet if the board is planning any fundamental counseling to nurse the wounds of the past.
If the debris of the past remains, could this potentially lead to another dressing room rift?
With India slated to play a Test match after seven years and with the 50-Over World Cup to follow in less than a year, solving a potential flare-up should be the primary concern of the top-brass of the BCCI.
There is definitely no doubt that Raman brought a sense of calmness to the Indian side since he took over. A highly skilled coach and man manager, Raman had a sense of empathy that is not quite common among coaches. One can question if one bad series can spell doom on his tenure but then again, Powar, as a coach, comes with a powerful CV too.
After taking over from Amit Pagnis in the direst of situations after Mumbai’s Syed Mushtaq Ali debacle earlier this year, the way Powar handled the situation and led the side to the title speaks about a certain outlook that is fundamental to his success as a coach. “Total chaos, crisis, and I like such a situation,” he told Cricinfo later.
Now he is back to his old role but the challenge in front of him is stern. Perhaps it is the time he can take a leaf out of his own books and navigate through as he has always been. "In a way, when things are so bad, the only way is up. Everyone's character shines through in a crisis. It's easier to take over a team in chaos because everyone has that fire of wanting to fight back and answer the critics, even if they may not admit to it openly.”
In this statement lies the answer to his success and the immediate prospects of Indian women’s cricket.
