Who needs a coach?

Whats common between the Indian cricket triumphs in West Indies in 1971, England 1986, England 2007? All of them came without a full time coach!

The T20 win is the second major Indian victory after the Test series in England. Which brings us to the question if we really need a coach. The short answer is YES. The long answer is that we do not need a big name. More precisely we do not need a name that come with a big ego tag. The cricket managers for the England and SA tours were decent cricketers with First Class experience. They were flexible guys, ready to work with the team, ready to go that extra mile without making a fuss. Chandu Borde and Lalchand Rajput were the average cricketers. Yet managed to contribute their bit for the successful campaigns. So rather than going for the Chappelles and the Kings of the coaching world, we need to go with a 'workable' guy who is a better man manager than a teacher.

World Champs!

Never thought I would see India become world chapms in some team sport in my lifetime. The cricket team came close on two occassions in world cups, they did win a Champions Trophy in 2002 - but agaun that was a shared prize with SriLanka.

Finally the team played the dream game for two weeks to become the world champs - what if it was Twenty20! T20 is what One day cricket was thought of in the 70s - Taking away the skills from the game, too much action, luck plays a role, ya da ya da ya da.... the same was said of the 50 over format in the 70s. The Australian team says that test cricket is the "real" cricket and that they will never warm up to this T20 version. So much for being gracious losers!
The Indian success has again shown that ratings, analysis and expert opinions mean zippo for big tournaments like this. On the other hand the success does not mean that Indian cricket is back to what it used to be during the 2002-04 seasons. Only time will tell if they can stand the test of the Australian tour.

Again not to leave our football and hockey teams who have pitched in with high profile trophies in the last few days. Winning major tournaments in so many sports is a new experience for India. So much so that this has been attributed to the 'Chuk De - India' magic and to the omnipresent SRK. Thank God KANK was a flop!!