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ICC CRICKET WORLD CUP

June 13, 2019

R Sridhar

West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, England, UK

Q. Spectators are pretty frustrated. What about the players and the support staff?
R SRIDHAR: Yeah, it is frustrating to wait in the dressing room on a rainy day. It's a challenge for the players and the support staff to switch down but not really switch off, because the match could start at any time, so keep yourself prepared in the back of the mind. At the same time, not think too much about the game and keep yourself a little busy, reading, some music, or chatting with friends. But we deal with it all the time.

Q. Not really an ideal game before a big match like Pakistan for India?
R SRIDHAR: It's uncontrollable, isn't it? You really can't control the weather, so we've had two good games. We came here looking forward to the third good one, but unfortunately, we can't control the weather. I went on the ground. It was almost like a skating rink. So it would put too much risk on the players to play on there, especially at the early phase of the tournament.

Q. In this cold and this weather, we saw in the Pakistan game, a couple of catches were dropped because just the coldness, the players were saying. Do you have any specific -- do you guys keep hand warmers or something? What is the way? How do you even train a player to catch in the cold and get used to the cold and stuff like that?
R SRIDHAR: Good question. I thought hand warmers is obviously the first option to keep your hands warm. Also, if you're running around in the ground between overs or between field positions and throwing the ball around to the players, that also keeps you warm between overs and doesn't allow your body to cool down. Also, we practice in the same weather, so that also gives us a heads up.

And I think they are professional cricketers, supposed to be the best in the world. They always make their best effort to catch a cricket ball, but then the nature of the beast is you catch some and you drop some. So it's part of the game.

Q. Sridhar, just want to know, they said yesterday around 12 days it will take for him to assess, and after that, preferably he'll do the next and everything. Like one part of it is batting and whether he's comfortable or not while batting. As a fielding coach, like if you give your okay, like what are the aspects, after this kind of an injury, when he's catching the ball, what are the things that you look at and give your feedback to the head coach or the captain about sickness, like when he's coming back from hand injury, and part of the things that you look at?
R SRIDHAR: Once we assess him, probably on 10th or 12th day, we'll have to look what is more -- it's his bottom hand while batting, if I'm not mistaken. It's not even his dominant hand because he's a right-hander. So it's not his dominant hand as well. I mean, throwing won't be a problem, but definitely the impact while fielding and catching, especially he's a slip fielder. If you know, he stands in the slips in the initial phase of the innings.

That can be an issue. We'll test him out with lighter balls first and gradually move on to the cricket ball and see how it goes from there, but, yeah, that will be a challenge.

Q. Hi. Pakistan is not known to be great fielding side. Do you think fielding could be vital in the next match?
R SRIDHAR: Fielding, I would say, is vital in every match. We saw that in -- I saw it at The Oval on Sunday when we played Australia. Although we had a big total on the board, we had to field out of our skins to defend the total. So in this World Cup, the format is so good that every game is vital, and that is where we have to be on top of the game.

Yeah, I think we should look to our field opponents, not only in the next game, but also in all games, and we expect our opponents to do the same. We should go out there with our best intensity as possible.

Q. When Rishabh Pant joins up, comes over here, will he play a full role in the fielding drills straight away?
R SRIDHAR: He's not here yet, is he?

Q. No, when he arrives.
R SRIDHAR: We'll take the call once he joins the team or once a decision is taken on Shikhar Dhawan. Obviously, he's a wicket-keeper, we all know that, so I think we'll cross the bridge when we get to it.

Q. How do you assess the Indian fielding side? What do you make of the resources at your disposal?
R SRIDHAR: I think I'm -- personally, I'm very happy with the kind of resources I have. We have a terrific slip catcher and a safe catcher in Rohit, and we have two guys, Virat and Jadhav, who are very intimidating to the position. They can intimidate any batsman, and they are prowling in the 30-yard range. To complement that, we have a player in Hardik Pandya, who can really help when needed. We are safe catchers. We're not fast bowlers.

We saw -- these are all the usual suspects, but we saw Chahal and Bumrah crack it up in the last game, diving after bowling long spells. We were in the penalty minute ball of the inning, diving and stopping runs. So that all goes well.

The biggest thing that came out to me was the attitude of the fielders, where they put the team ahead of themselves, but these are the qualities which you need when you want to go out and win championships. This really came out in the last game, and that was good to see. So I think the biggest challenge is to stay consistent. To me, that is the biggest challenge, to reduce the time between the good days and bad days. That is integral.

Pretty much, answering your question straightforward, with what I have, yeah, I think we can make an impact on the field as far as the difference goes in the fielding between the two teams.

Q. Ground fielding and overall fielding is superb, but one area that is the direct throw? Compared to teams like Australia, how do you assess the progress over the last few months or years? I think we are still lacking somewhere on the direct throw, hitting the wicket directly from the outfield.
R SRIDHAR: That's a very good observation. It's a very good observation. It is something which I have my eye on as well, and we practice a lot for that. I would say converting, whether it's an run-out or non, converting one in three or four throws is a good conversion rate, in my opinion. Don't judge me on that opinion, but in my opinion, picking up one out of four, you're doing a good job as a direct unit, but we failed to do that in the last game. We had over ten strikes, and we hit only once. In some days we hit three out of five. It's a practice thing and a system best thing, but that is one area we work hard on in every session.

Yeah, it's a good observation. We should maybe get better on that and get a couple in the next game.

Q. So just a clarification on the previous thing you said, the fielders have been putting the team ahead of themselves. Do you mean in terms of whether going for glory catches or in terms of, well, injuries or risking it?
R SRIDHAR: To answer the question, the second point you said, they're willing to risk injuries to save that one run, which is a great quality to have.

Q. Just taking off from his question on direct hit, there is a lot of criticism from former players on many teams of this modern era that fielders throw unnecessarily, not even when batsmen are inside. Is that something that's spoken about that you have to throw probably to keep up the intensity, or how does that work?
R SRIDHAR: If there is an opportunity, we encourage the respective fielder to go for the stumps because we believe that his teammate will have his back, by backing up the throw. Sometimes it happens, and very rarely it doesn't happen. So we encourage fielders to create an opportunity where none exists. We encourage fielders to try and convert an opportunity which they have created. So that is a rule we would like to take as a fielding unit, to be more on the aggressive side, and we all know where it comes from. It comes from the captain himself.

So that is the kind of cricket we want to play. There is a brand of cricket we want to play as a fielding unit, so we encourage that. And in the bargain, we lose one here or there, it doesn't matter because on a good day we pull off two or three brilliant run-outs. Also, if you keep throwing at the stump, it keeps your shoulder warm in conditions like this. If you don't throw and suddenly you get a chance for a run-out, you throw (inaudible). So these various factors are involved. So that's the brand of cricket we want to play.

Q. What are the qualities that you try to see in an outfielder? What are the qualities that decide who will be fielding in the outfield? You talked about Kohli. You talked about Vijay Shankar. What are the qualities you think an outfielder should have?
R SRIDHAR: We get to know a fielder during the fitness test. To anybody, the biggest quality you need to be a good outfielder, obviously, is a good arm, combined with good speed across the turf. These are good qualities you look for for somebody who's fielding 70 yards away from the bat. So we have these fitness tests where we do the 40-meter run, 20-meter run so we know their timing, so we can easily make out who's quick. And then the arms play a vital role in who's fielding in the outfield.

So these two are the biggest qualities I probably will be looking at to have them in the outfield. When it comes to infield, looking at speed and agility and ability to change directions, stuff like that, and the reaction time. Yeah, in the outfield, the two big qualities would be speed and strength in the shoulder, the throw.

Q. Just one question. You know you talked about Bumrah and Chahal. How do you try to get fielders that are not athletically natural fielders to be at the level at which they are, they've got everyone's back, and they're in the area where they're protecting properly, covered?
R SRIDHAR: One area is we try to educate them with awareness with respect to fielding, and we try to work on fitness. Obviously, Basu, fitness coach, works a lot on their fitness as well. We've got a leadup to this tournament to work with Chahal, Bumrah, Kedar, guys like this, who are willing to work really hard and to work on their skills. So that really helped.

Bumrah is probably one of the hardest workers as far as fielding goes. From when he joined the team in 2016 to what he is now, he's a massive improvement, although still a work in progress, but a massive improvement.

The mindset of the players combined with the increased levels of fitness, and then we can chip in with the technical aspect of fielding and the awareness and anticipation part. So combining all this definitely helps them improve their fielding skills.

Q. As someone representing the Indian camp, I'd just like to know what is your opinion on having reserve days for a tournament like this?
R SRIDHAR: Oh, there's a big technical committee from the ICC on that. It depends on the format, the time available. We don't have any days off in this tournament. Every day there is a game. So there's hardly an opportunity to have a reserve day. I don't know the technical aspect of it. The ICC will decide that. It's not for me to take that call.

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