INTERVIEW
Follow UsSome players might not have been the best during their playing days, but in a second life, they transform their CVs into stellar ones as coaches.
One such individual is Hemang Badani, who, since retiring as a player, has found himself chasing ‘titles’ for fun, be it with Chepauk Super Gillies (CSG) in the Tamil Nadu Premier League (TNPL), where he won thrice, or with Sunrisers Eastern Cape in SA20, where he won two titles in back-to-back seasons.
His accolade even extends to Jaffna Kings in the Lanka Premier League (LPL), where he served as a consultant. So, what is it that makes him very special as a coach?
Cricket.com had the opportunity to talk to Badani, dissecting his coaching methods in an exclusive interview
You have this habit of having a Midas touch wherever you go, so what’s the key to winning trophies?
First and foremost, I don't know if I have the Midas touch, but I am blessed to have been a part of many winning sides in franchise cricket. Winning is a by-product of how well you handle players, how clear they are while playing the tournament and how much time you have spent with them.
It's also about man management. For instance, in a tournament such as the TNPL, you have players who want to become professionals. At times, you are almost hand-holding them and telling them what needs to be done and what can be avoided.
You even let them know that they are good enough to be here, giving them confidence and the belief that they are set to do better things in life. You are also strategizing and creating ideas back and forth.
How about the Indian Premier League (IPL), SA20, and other franchise leagues?
If you are playing professional cricket, whether the SA20, ILT20, or IPL, players don't necessarily need to be told that they are good enough to be here.
It's more about their role, what's expected of them, who their match-ups are, what number they will be batting or when they will bowl, and what skills will be required for them to excel. You are handing both sides of the coin very differently.
It is all about keeping all the players in a good space, giving them clarity and giving them confidence.
So, when there is a raw youngster in the team, how do you handle that? Do you go into the technicality or work more on mentality?
If you have just a week or 10 days before the tournament, you are not necessarily tinkering a lot with the technique. That's not the time. You are basically giving them role clarity and telling them ‘what's expected of them’.
You are also giving them their match-ups, clarity about their strengths and weaknesses, what bowler they can take on and whom they need to be watchful of, and what shots he can play. I speak of batting because that's something I handle quite a bit. Give them role clarity, also let them know ground dimensions and about the surface.
If you are playing the IPL, you are playing in 7-8 venues, every surface is different. In a given match, what to expect, who are the bowlers against you, what can you do, who you can take on, who you can't take on, what are we looking at as a side from you and just give them that confidence to go out there and play.
The younger players are mainly excited and looking forward to playing the IPL. You are also trying to calm their nerves and ask them to play everything without the ‘fear of getting dropped’. So, you are trying to find the balance between letting them stay excited and trying to calm their nerves.
'Great players don’t make great coaches’, but players who necessarily don’t have a great playing career turn out to be excellent coaches. What do you make of it?
I genuinely feel that coaching is a skill that requires the right temperament. A person, be it a superstar player or someone like me, must work hard to be a coach. I was not a superstar player, but I have worked hard to be a coach. You still need to work hard again to be a coach.
Just because you were a superstar player in the past does not necessarily mean that you will automatically be a good coach. And likewise, if you are still a superstar player, you can also be a good coach. A prime example is Rahul Dravid.
He has done well. He is a superstar player. Dravid has almost 20,000 runs for India, but he has also gone on to do well as a coach. There are so many superstar players who haven’t done well, either.
So, there is no set pattern, but coaching is a skill set one will have to work at. Nurture, take as a serious profession, and it's something open to players like me who have played a bit of cricket and then gone into coaching. I think coaching is something that I love and I enjoy but at the same time, it's also a place for people and superstars who have done well in the past to come into this spectrum of cricket and excel.
Where do you stand in this debate of data vs instinct in terms of a coach?
Data plus instinct. Both are crucial.
Also read: How Data fuelled India to T20 World Cup 2024 title
How you use data with your instinct is very important. I don't believe that data is everything, nor do I say instinct is everything. The coach's job is to see and decipher the data with his knowledge and how to make use of it.
How key are scouting programmes for franchise leagues?
Massive. I think scouting is still very underrated. Scouting is not done as professionally as I think it should be. I think going forward, you will see scouting in a big way. I think scouting is where you're going to get talent. With franchise cricket getting bigger and bigger, you're going to have that many more scouts in the future.
Also, as head coach of Sunrisers Eastern Cape at SA20, could you talk about what makes the tournament unique and impactful?
It's a good league purely because you also have a lot of domestic traction. A lot of the domestic sides are actually the base of these franchises, and you have a fan base already if somebody who lives around the Cape Town area is following the [MI] Cape Town side.
If somebody is in the Joburg area, he is following the JSK side. The same applies to Durban, Port Elizabeth [SEC], Paarl [Paarl Royals], and all of that. So, there is already a culture of sport in South Africa, and people who follow South African cricket, domestic cricket, end up also following their own province and franchise cricket is an extension of that.
So, it is a culmination of all of that, which makes it successful.
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