Now that's the thing-- when you came here as coach of the national team, too, you spoke of Edward de Bono and others, of wearing different hats, of all sorts of things that prima facie had nothing to do with the cricket, and those players who were used to doing things the traditional way didn't take to all this new stuff very kindly.
Now you are dealing with an even rawer bunch, and you start talking of music and stuff-- what does music have to do with it anyway?
GREG: The point is that there are training programs for everything-- tennis, football, business, acting, whatever. And all these programs are evolving, discovering new ways of doing things, of teaching. There is a Japanese guy, Suzuki, whose teaching methods for music are entirely different, and he has been extremely successful.
We read a lot, about different people around the world doing interesting things in the training field, over a range of endeavors, and when we find something that makes sense in the cricket context, we learn from that and adapt it to our needs.
IAN: It is not about "teaching cricket", the thing is really about inspiring people to perform at their best. I am not sure that a lot of teaching methods inspire, as you probably know from your own schooling. There were likely some teachers that inspired you and many others who didn't, so the key question is to find out what would inspire you and what would not.
GREG: Also, we thought of what would work for us if we went to cricket school today, what would inspire us and what would not. You spoke to that lad today and he probably wasn't able to put it into the exact words he needed, but the bottom line is these kids are being turned on to the game of cricket, in a way they haven't been till now.
IAN: That's the point-- you have to be turned on to whatever it is you are doing. It is not so much about practicing the forward defensive stroke for hours on end-- what is more important is to let the player understand himself, learn that he can be a good person, a courageous person, give them good self esteem, see themselves in a positive way as a social group, and that is invaluable when you are working with a bunch of sportsmen.
This is the sort of thing that happens in some other countries, doesn't seem to happen that much in India where the way you are brought up is different, more insular, less inclined to come together as a group, to achieve something as a group. The kids here are basically no different to Australian kids or English kids or West Indian kids, it is just that they are brought up differently.
For instance, they tend to have their decisions made for them in their formative years, and thus there is an inbuilt resistance, if you will, to making decisions for yourself.
GREG: When I went to coach South Australia after 15 years out of the game, I was appalled by the way the learning of the game had changed. That is when I was reintroduced to Ian through a mutual friend, and he was finding the same thing in junior cricket in Melbourne, so we thought we would do some research into what the champion players did and see how we could learn from that.
Even here, it is early days, but we have already introduced to the boys a hockey coach and boxing coach and coaches who excel in wrestling and taekwondo and badminton and gymnastics, and through them, these kids are learning a a whole new range of movement patterns.
For instance, taekwondo is about speed and reflexes, so is badminton; boxing is about footwork and wrestling is about setting yourself a low, strong base to operate from, and if you think about it, all these things are very important for the cricket player.
IAN: A problem with a number of the coaches in India is that if you bring a lot of scientific stuff and present it in a scientific way, they don't know what in the hell you are talking about. You can turn someone off very quickly if you present something in a way they are unused to, so the trick really is to present things that are important in ways that are simple to understand and apply.
GREG: With all these academies and coaches and stuff, we have turned an athletic pursuit into an academic pursuit. The fact of the matter is that you cannot teach cricket. Much of it is in the subconscious, the movement patterns are in the subconscious.
It has to become intuitive, instinctive, and the only way it can become that is through experiential learning. What we are trying to set up here is a world where kids can learn what they need to through experiencing it. We will direct them where necessary, and we will give basic instruction, but then we will get out of the way, and help them find their own way, and we encourage them to fail.
You saw what we were doing there this afternoon, during the fielding session, you made the point that perhaps the kids were unused to that style of fielding. We knew that, we knew they were going to make a lot of mistakes. We wanted them to, because if they don't make mistakes they won't learn.
Cricket is about failure-- understanding it, accepting it, learning from it. Bradman is the best example. In 82 innings, he only made 29 hundreds, so one way of putting that is he failed 53 times out of 82. And if Bradman failed that many times, the rest of us are even worse off. If you want to go forward in cricket, you have to be prepared to fail a lot of the time. You have to try things, like the juggling for instance that you saw the lads do this afternoon.
What does juggling have to do with cricket? Nothing, directly-- but indirectly, it can teach you to risk failure. To take risks. I couldn't juggle two weeks ago; I found it difficult to accept the concept of getting rid of the second ball. You throw up the first ball and are so focused on catching it that you don't focus on the ball that is still in your hand, the second ball.
So whenever I tried to juggle, I failed. It was only once I forced myself to accept that I would drop the first ball, but that it was more important to get rid of the second ball, that I got to one step closer to learning to juggle. And I kept dropping the ball and failing in front of the kids, but then I got it finally, and there is a lesson there for me and for them. I had to overcome a certain inhibition, a fear; I had to take a risk, and when I did I succeeded.
And that is what we were doing with the kids during the fielding practice as well. You could say we should have taught them the basics of how to get body behind ball and how to go low and how to use the cupped hands to field and how to load the throw. Instead, we put them out there, we told them what the objective was, we had them do it. And as you saw, they failed at it, they made a lot of mistakes. But also, as you saw, after three or four failed attempts, things began to click, they started figuring it out for themselves and they became better in the field, they become more confident.
The interesting thing about that session, and you must keep in mind that this is the first time this group has done this fielding drill, is that as you probably noticed, they figured the thing out for themselves, they helped each other figure it out. They learnt that it is not about stopping the ball but about attacking the ball-- and since they learnt that lesson on their own, without us drilling it into their heads through lectures, it has already become a part of their mental makeup. They know now it is better to attack the ball, even risking failure, than to stand back and wait for it to come.
We could have taught that like a lecture, but it wouldn't have worked. Here we put them in the field, and made them discover it for themselves, so now it is embedded in them, and what is left for us to do is fine tune technique, help them get even better at it. The goal for us was to get them to do this instinctively, and they did because they no longer fear failure; they realize that the more runs they save, the more run outs they achieve, the more games they will end up winning.
That is why for instance we want them on the obstacle course. It frightens most of them, they find it daunting. Bloody hell, it daunts us, and we have gone through a lot more than these kids. But that is the thing about fear-- we encouraged them to conquer it, to try even if it meant failing, and this morning you saw the result, after just five days.
Climbing those two ropes, for instance, is not easy-- having worked with them, I will guarantee you that if you put the Indian cricket team there, not one of them would do that; most wouldn't even attempt it. Yet, in a group of 22 kids, only three failed today to get to the very top, and even those three made the attempt.
A problem with established groups-- and I want to make clear that I am not talking only about Indian cricket, because this is true for a lot of teams in a whole range of sports-- is that individuals and teams are reluctant to try new things. They are afraid that if they try something new and fail, they may not be able to go back to the old way they were comfortable with, and they will end up neither here nor there.
An example is Mohammad Kaif. He has talent, certainly, but he is stuck in a cricketing rut, he has been doing certain things in the same way all his life, and it clearly hasn't gotten him very far - or more accurately, it hasn't gotten him as far as he would like to go. Clearly then he has to try new ways of doing things. But he is frightened of making the changes he needs to make, because he worries that if he tried new things and they didn't work for him, then were would he be?
Your point Greg is that kids like these, with no record to live up to, no quantifiable goals like say holding down your place in the team to clutter your thinking, no reputation to protect, will therefore have more confidence, less hesitance, in changing, learning, adapting?
GREG: Absolutely, and that is true of Australia and South Africa and pretty much everywhere sport is played. And that is also why such young kids are good to work with. Lalit has a clock running; he has made a significant investment in building this academy and in bringing us over here, and he has to show results-- not next month, perhaps, but he cannot wait indefinitely either.
Fair enough, and so we don't really have the time to go back and work with 10 and 12 year olds, which would be ideal. So we are working with kids 15-19, which is the only age group we could work with and achieve measurable results in the sort of time frame Lalit can live with. The good bit is, once we are fully functional, we can dig deeper, get to working simultaneously with those 10 and 12 year olds, and the results will be even more beneficial.
We've only started doing this from October, but the good thing is, we already know we are on the right track. With the two groups we have handled and now with this, the good thing is the kids are learning to make their own decisions, which is not something Indian kids by and large learn to do.
I told you this morning about creating an environment, and the fielding session this afternoon is an example. In a normal coaching environment, if we had done this exact same drill, ninety per cent of the session would have been about the coach yelling 'no, no, that is wrong, do it this way'. The thing is, when a kid hears the word 'no' what he actually hears is 'I can't do this, I am no good at it'-- and that is absolutely fatal.
So what did we do instead?
We put them out on the field; we told them what they needed to do, and we got out of their way. When they made mistakes, we didn't interfere-- the kid knows he misfielded, what is the point in yelling at him? When someone got it right, we stepped in and applauded, and encouraged that kid to help his mates. Pretty soon, the kids knew from seeing their own mates what was right and what was wrong; the competitive element kicked in, and they began working harder to get it right, to match their mates.
Putting it simply, we created an environment for them where it was okay for them to fail-- and they then taught themselves to succeed.
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