They are men of extreme contrasts. J. Arun Kumar has tattoos, rides a Harley Davidson besides his other cars, is outspoken and during his playing days was a flamboyant opener. On the other end is Mansur Ali Khan, who is soft-spoken, an anachronism considering he was a medium pacer in his heydays.
But together, they have struck a wonderful tandem as coaches with the Karnataka cricket team that reaped the benefits of their expertise and won the Ranji Trophy defeating Maharashtra in the final at Hyderabad, last week.
Arun, ‘JAK’ to his friends, and Mansur, ‘MAK’ being his nickname, have had an association even during their days as key players for Karnataka. The duo shared rooms and now as coaches – Arunhandles ‘batting’ and Mansur supervises ‘bowling’ – their old rapport is very much intact while they also consciously avoid treading on each other’s toes.
The State had many heroes in batting led by K.L. Rahul (1033 runs) while Karun Nair, Robin Uthappa, Manish Pandey, Amit Verma and Ganesh Satish, all played their relevant parts. Similiarly, the bowlers too prospered and if Karnataka registered seven outright victories, it is thanks to the effort of speedster Abhimanyu Mithun (41 wickets), H.S. Sharath, skipper R. Vinay Kumar, S. Arvind and Shreyas Gopal. It would be prudent to hear from Arun and Mansur about the manner in which they extracted the best out of the team.
Jak’s prescription
Confidence the key
“At the start of the season, while we were looking at under-25 players I did look at talent, but I also wanted these players to have the necessary confidence.
I didn’t want players to step in and while facing Harbhajan Singh, think, ‘oh my god, I am playing against Harbhajan.’ I wanted the players to play their natural styles without getting overwhelmed.”
An arm around the shoulder
“The players are already under tremendous pressure and as a coach you are expected to reduce that and make them feel at ease. You cannot tell them, ‘you better get runs or get wickets’ and make them struggle even more. As a coach I had many one-on-one
sessions with the players before the season and got to understand them better. I encouraged them a lot.”
A matter of trust
“When MAK and I took over last year there wasn’t much time to work on the players but this year we had time. I felt that among the players the trust-factor was not much and we worked on that, I made them enjoy each other’s success. Dropping a player is the hardest thing but we made sure that we explained to the player concerned about why he was dropped because we believed in ‘horses for courses’ and thatdetermined our team composition. Once that was made clear even the dropped players were cheering the squad from the outside and that camaraderie within the team is the biggest take-away I cherish.”
Mak’s measured words
Practice makes perfect
“Initially the bowlers were not clear in their minds and I worked on that. In the pre-season training, I made them aware of their strengths and at practise I told them to pitch it 10 feet from the batting crease and make the batsman play. I told them that if they could get it consistently there, they have more chances of getting wickets.
Mithun is an in-swing bowler and I told him to bowl four deliveries of in-swing and do a variation for the fifth – it could be a yorker, a bouncer, an away-swinger. Told him and the other fast bowlers to use the bouncer as a surprise weapon, like once in three overs and all that helped. I also used a speed-gun at training and that added more value as there was competition between the fast bowlers.”
Spinning some wickets
“The usual role of spinners is to keep it tight but I had chats with Anil Kumble and he said: ‘Even if they go for runs its okay as long as they get wickets.’ When we had sessions in the nets I made the spinners bowl 120 deliveries because in match situations they are expected to bowl 20 overs and if they could do that at training then they are well prepared and can cope with the pressure. I worked on these aspects with bowlers like Shreyas Gopal and Abrar Kazi. For instance with Shreyas, I focussed on his leg-spin and told him to give
four deliveries of leg-spin per over and then work on a variation like googly in the other deliveries.”
Jak the friend
“JAK and I go a long way back. We kept it simple, he would watch the batsmen and also conduct close-in catching practice while I monitored the bowlers and also gave high-catches to fielders in the deep. I look forward to working with JAK in the coming years too.”
