Mumbai: As cricket branched out to extra codecs and have become equally aggressive throughout genders, the scope for teaching grew manifold. Gone are the occasions when teaching the nationwide or state crew had been the one avenues obtainable to these with the aptitude and credentials.
You could possibly be teaching an IPL franchise in the summertime, having brainstormed with an elite athlete discussing ODI techniques, then put in place a personalized camp to assist one other India participant put together for an abroad Take a look at task, work with a neighborhood crew in a T20 state offshoot, shift focus to ladies’s franchise cricket for his or her league and get again to do academy work for the mainstream males’s franchise. That is just about Abhishek Nayar’s teaching resume for 2025. His stint with the Indian cricket crew was temporary, however his problem-solving abilities stay in excessive demand.
Nayar, whose tenure as India assistant coach ended with the Australia tour early this yr, was instantly welcomed again by Kolkata Knight Riders as assistant coach. The previous India cricketer who has labored intently with Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Dinesh Karthik and others in a person capability, can also be the pinnacle coach of UP Warriorz within the Girls’s Premier League.
“Good luck,” he says about his success in guiding elite batters. “My type of teaching could be very easy. It’s understanding what a participant wants. The inception to every little thing is knowing what the issue is, proper? That’s what everybody finds actually arduous. Why is a participant not doing nicely? Why is a participant not with the ability to rating runs? What’s stopping him?
“I form of pleasure myself on figuring that out actually early, whether or not it’s a ability downside or a psychological downside. To seek out out what’s the primary barrier I have to cross. Then it turns into barely simpler to win the belief of the participant. Teaching an elite athlete is about getting the primary 40 seconds of the dialog proper. If you happen to handle that, you hit the proper nerve. You may then try to impression their profession.”
Some gamers noticed mentoring abilities in Nayar even when he was a participant. Rohit had reached out to Nayar to shake off the frustration of the 2011 ODI World Cup snub. How the 2 labored collectively by means of progressive methods on Rohit’s health is nicely documented.
“What I’ve realised with prime cricketers, a whole lot of the time it’s figuring out ability and the thoughts. In ability, it’s figuring out whether or not the issue is technical or tactical,” he says.
“Once I labored with Rohit extra not too long ago, it was about tactically discovering a solution to get him to attain in T20s. Get him to make use of sure techniques early in his batting to beat sure bowlers. The plans and methods you make change on occasion. I can’t let you know specifics, nevertheless it’s nearly like saying this man goes to come back and bowl to you and earlier than he does this, that is what you’re going to do. That is your first choice. And also you follow that. It provides an individual readability and perception that, ‘I’ve practiced this and that is how I’m going to place him beneath strain’. You’re taking that punt.”
One can join the dots. Rohit had to enhance on sluggish build-ups from earlier IPL seasons, overcome his bother towards left-arm pacers, and higher the sub-par returns in IPL.
“Each cricketer begins realising that bowlers are additionally understanding how you’re taking them down. So, you must come out with other ways,” he says. “They are often very, very small issues. It may be the guard you’re altering, which ball you’re stepping out to. These are tactical modifications that gamers usually relate to, purchase into, reasonably than technical modifications.”
Does working with ladies cricketers require re-strategising? “I believe the teaching philosophy and the language that you simply converse to women and men is barely completely different,” he says. “Cricket per se is just not new to me as a result of I’ve accomplished a whole lot of commentary on ladies’s cricket and that helps. I’m used to understanding fields.”
Nayar had labored beneath the earlier UP Warriorz head coach Jon Lewis for the franchise and he did some camps with the England ladies’s crew. The previous India and Mumbai cricketer says he’s had conversations with some NCA coaches, “not on the right way to coach, however on the right way to converse to them or what works once you converse to ladies. And what can get them going and what they don’t like.”
As gamers seek for methods to remain related throughout codecs, the identical crew coaches take day trip to supply customised classes for the subsequent problem. “It’s right here that I too get to reinforce my abilities,” says Nayar. “Each participant expects a brand new problem, a brand new drill. So, as arduous as it’s for the participant, it’s as arduous for me as nicely. As a result of I’ve to continually maintain considering out of the field as to how I could make him really feel that he’s extra ready than he was the final time. So, it’s a tough one… a relentless evolution on each ends.”
