International teams are appointing batting coach these days to overcome the shortcomings of its batters in order to see more good scores from them. If the head coach of the team happens to be a good batsman during his playing days, the outcome is positive. However, if the case if reverse, his tips won’t be useful for anyone.
Ravi Shastri, the Indian coach, was a decent all-rounder but calling him a great batsman or a match winning bowler won’t do justice. The committee of Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman and Sourav Ganguly had this thing in mind before asking Shastri to come on board as a coach. To solve the concern, Rahul Dravid was given the role of a batting consultant but Shastri never allowed this to happen. His move against Rahul Dravid is showing it after effects despite India winning the Test matches against Sri Lanka. KL Rahul, the Indian opener, is struggling to convert his fifties into hundreds while Shikhar Dhawan is throwing away his wicket after scoring a hundred. These are worrying sign for a player and his team. The Lankans are no more the same, hence it is not causing any problem but when it comes to teams like Australia, England, South Africa and New Zealand, such easy and unwanted dismissals will surely harm the team in the long run.
There is hardly any team in the world who will like to see the back of openers in an unfancied fashion. It shows the mental block of a batsman when he is dismissed despite being set. Shikhar Dhawan and KL Rahul are not the only batsmen, who have the tendency of getting dismissed when heading towards a big milestone. Virat Kohli and other star batsmen of the team have been going through this patch every now and then. This is where a former batsman like Rahul Dravid could have played a big role. The current India A coach has led his team to many titles since his appointment as coach. The batsmen have spoken about the ways he has improved their batting. Learning curve has to go on till the last breath and if this is implement in contest of the Indian team, the current flow is not great. Batsmen ate repeating the same mistakes and the big teams are master in identifying it, making sure cheap dismissals is the right mode to move forward. It is high time that Team India is given a well-qualified batting coach to iron out the flaws or mental block.
Even if Ravi Shastri is not ready, the BCCI should go ahead. The Indian team is due to play strong teams in 2018 and a player like Rahul Dravid is must for them. The importance of a wicket is something needs to be understand by the batsmen before it is too late. We can’t ignore the reality that India has scored 600 plus runs in most of the Test matches but the story will be entirely different outside the sub-continent. The slightest of the mistake will result in the dismissal, containing the flow of runs. Virat Kohli and his men should be given a batting coach on urgent basis.