Give us an overview of the India tour, as seen by you?

Smaller grounds, faster outfields. Add to that the weather, which will get hotter by the day. Plus the boisterous crowd, which won't be supporting us. So all told, the tour looks tough, the odds are against us. I would see this one as a tour that tests our mental and physical toughness, our character, our ability to respond to pressure. We don't intend to let it get to us, to become unhappy and to complain, our idea is to take it all in stride and come out shining, hopefully. We are here to enjoy our cricket.

What is the vision you have for this team?

It isn't my vision alone, it is a shared vision, it is the vision of the team as well. It is about a lot of things, about enjoying what we do, about taking pride in being good at what we do. It is about being part of a group, about not being selfish, not chasing personal records, it is about helping your mate. It is about having pride in the baggy green, in Australia. It is a combination of all these things -- and Steve Waugh epitomises all this.

How do you define the role of a coach -- on field, and off?

On the field, coaches are not there to teach you the basics -- hopefully, you have learnt all that before you get to this level. The coach is there more to guide you. There are times when things don't seem to be working for you, batting or bowling, whatever. The coach is there to keep an eye on you, to spot what is going wrong, and to help you correct it. Also to think of overall strategies, tactics, refine it in team meetings, that kind of thing.

Off the field, the coach's job includes building a team. Fostering relationships between the players, getting them all welded into one unit where everyone is ready to back everyone else to the limit and beyond. There is a delicate balance here -- each individual has different needs from a coach, so I have to understand each player and give him the kind of backup he needs, plus the team has a collective need and I have to know what that is and cater to it as well. I guess you have to be schoolmaster, mom, and a whole lot of other things all at once.

So why is it that the great players don't make great coaches?

I think it has a lot to do with character. A great player spends so much time playing the game that it gets difficult for them to get back in after they have crossed that boundary line. That filters out the first lot of great players from becoming great coaches. The next lot of great players is just too gifted. They have a lot of natural talent, they play naturally, they don't know how to stop and analyse what they do, they can do things only the gifted can do but like most gifted people, they can't explain how they do it, or teach you to do it too.

Coaching is not about talent as a player, it is more about people management. The great player may be highly skilled, but no one said a great player has to be a good people manager. Coaching today s about organising a bunch of gifted sportsmen into a unit, envisioning their goals and the path to follow to get there, treating all as equals. Coaching is a lot of hard work, and it is only people with the capacity for infinite labour that can make good coaches.

You talk of what the team needs from you -- for your part, what do you ask of this team?

I have my goals -- to get the team to maintain its standard, then to improve on it even further. We have a great tradition, we have a huge population back home and we want to instill in the team and through the team, in our people, that they can do it, they can do anything if they try. Also, we have a few old heads in our team who will quit sooner rather than later -- I need to ensure that the transition is smooth, it doesn't take the edge off the team.

You have finished the first tour game, in Nagpur, how did you rate it?

Well, I thought we were pretty disjointed on the first day, our batting was not anything I wanted to shout about. But even there, there is the good side, Kasprowicz and Gillespie got good runs and that is something I want, what this team wants, for all eleven to chip in with the bat and make runs. The second day, we started off not so hot with the ball, but then we steadied and after that we really got back into the game, the guys hit the right line, and second time round, our batsmen got runs, Ricky got his second fifty, he needs to convert those into big hundreds but that will come, Langer got a good hundred, so yeah, all told, it was a good way to start.

Sledging is a subject that keeps cropping up when you talk of Australian sides. As a coach, what is your take on that?

Well, I don't think it is an Aussie thing -- all sides do it, it is only that the media plays up the Aussie angle. Teams and players today, in a world of highly competitive, high stakes sport, are looking to get on top of each other and as long as they keep within the limits, I think that is fine.

Another question we ask visiting coaches -- do you actually sit down and work out how to counter Sachin Tendulkar?

Sachin Tendulkar is a great batsman, probably the finest in the world today, and like all great batsmen, you give him an inch and he will take the game away from you. So yes, we will be thinking about him, won't we, working on ways to make sure we don't give him that inch.

Does that mean sitting down with bowlers and working on lines to bowl?

Not exactly, not entirely. You have to think things through from various angles. You have to figure that no matter how great a batsman is, there is just so much he can do on his own. Sachin has got some very good backup, guys like Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly, VVS Laxman, make no mistake, that guy can bat very well, and these guys give Sachin the backup, provide a comfort zone for him. So sometimes, strategy could be about taking away that comfort zone, cutting it out from under him -- we have time yet, to figure it all out, we'll see and come the time, hopefully, the guys will be ready and prepared to do what they have to do. Should be a great, tough series, no mistake.

Australian player profiles

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