Young boys playing at the under-16 level are still taught that survival is their priority because there are almost no tournaments in the T20 format for them.
Puneet Tripathi, who plays in under-16 tournaments in Mumbai, is all excited about the Twenty20 World Cup that blasted off this week.
Like millions of other fans around the world, he is mesmerised by the high octane action provided by the likes of Virendra Sehwag and Kevin Pietersen, who play innovative shots to dispatch the ball to all corners of the field.
But when Puneet himself takes guard, he plays classic cricket: he hits the ball along the ground in the V with a straight bat. And this is a mantra that coaches constantly repeat.
“The basic requirement is technique,” says Padmakar Shivalkar, who coaches at the Shivaji Park Gymkhana. “The first thing the boys have to inculcate is patience and staying power.”
But isn’t this at odds with the kind of cricket being played at the international level, where teams today are expected to score over 300 runs in a day in Test matches, leave alone the scoring rate in a T20 game?
Chandrakant Pandit, who runs a cricket clinic, agrees that coaching needs to adapt to the changing needs of the game. “Earlier, during training, the first priority was given to defensive techniques and then came attacking shots. Today, it’s the other way round. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that,” he says.
But that still does not mean the boys are getting to practise some of the innovative shots they see in T20 matches. According to Shivalkar, “younger boys do not have the strength to clear the fence. Sachin (Tendulkar) was the rare exception who cleared even the CCI ground’s boundary at the age of 16.” That, however, does not explain why budding young cricketers don’t practise things like the reverse sweep or the scoop over fine leg which require no great strength.
Pravin Amre, coach of the Mumbai Indians, feels the boys will automatically learn to loft the ball as they gain strength and confidence. “The difference between a shot hit along the ground and one that is hit in the air lies in the ball’s point of impact with the bat. To hit it in the air, you need to play away from the body.” When to start practising those strokes is a fine judgement call, according to him.
But the real reason why coaches seem reluctant to unleash the boys’ attacking instincts may be because most tournaments are 2-day or 3-day affairs or at best a 50-over match. Puneet points out that only one of the many tournaments he has participated in was in the T20 format. “We only get to play Twenty20 in a few practice games,” he says.
So are we churning out a generation of Test batsmen when the future might well belong to T20?
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