What is common between Uthappa, Rahane and Raina? They all went to Pravin Amre to get their act together. Derek Abraham talks to former Test player from Mumbai to find out what makes him the most sought after batting coach in India today
Like any true-blue Kodava, he is known to live life king size. Hailing from Coorg, the picturesque south Karnataka district which uber-rich coffee planters call home, Robin Uthappa is as cool as they come.
Supremely talented and fiercely proud, his bravado with the bat is more exciting than assuring. That said, the right-hander is often accused of being laid-back. Perhaps, his not-so-impressive returns in 41 ODI appearances, spread over over eight years, are to blame.
Somewhere at the back of his mind, Pravin Amre harboured similar thoughts. During the 2012 IPL season, he conveyed the same to Uthappa. “You are not working hard enough. You must come out of your comfort zone,” Amre, then assistant coach of the now-defunct Pune Warriors India, told the team’s superstar player. Taken aback, Uthappa retorted, “How can you say that? I know I am working very hard.” Amre’s reply was even blunter. “Whenever you decide to work harder, give me a shout,” he said.
The IPL was over before anyone knew it and Uthappa went on a holiday. “One day, I got a call from Spain. It was Robin. He admitted he wasn’t putting in the hard yards,” Amre recalls. He promptly told Uthappa to enjoy his trip.
A month later, Uthappa touched down in Mumbai. His first meeting with Amre turned was an eye-opener. “I told him was to shed 16 kg off his upper body,” Amre says. How did Uthappa go about it? “I am just a batting coach. So his fitness isn’t my concern. He has a team of dieticians and trainers. All I wanted was a fitter, hungrier Robin,” Amre says.
Three months after that ‘top-heavy’ conversation, Uthappa returned in top shape. The ensuing two-year period saw the 28-year-old force his way back into the ODI side after six years, excel for Karnataka on the domestic circuit and play a key role in the fortunes of Kolkata Knight Riders. Nowadays, when the selectors sit down to pick a side, Uthappa features in their discussion.
Uthappa may be the first, but he is not the only one seeking Amre’s help. Simply put, the 46-year-old Mumbaikar, who happens to be from the stable of a certain Ramakant Achrekar, is the country’s most sought-after batting consultant today. Technically sound, knowledgeable, practical, approachable and a great manager of men, Amre also counts Ajinkya Rahane, Suresh Raina, Naman Ojha, Dinesh Karthik among his wards.
Player to coach: the journey
So when did he get bitten by the coaching bug? “Nothing was planned. It happened by default,” Amre says in a tête-à-tête at the iconic Shivaji Park Gymkhana in Mumbai.
The former India batsman happens to be the president of the club that produced him and 20 other Test cricketers. As we sit down in the swanky conference room on the first floor, Amre, sporting a slick Roger Federer cap and training gear, points to a framed picture of Shivaji Park. “It was taken in the 1950s,” he says. “This is where we are sitting,” he points to the black and white photo, probably shot from a chopper. A few hundred metres away, at the Bengal Club, he runs Amre Coaching Clinic where 30-odd Under-14 boys ply their trade.
“Not many know that I played provincial cricket for Boland, South Africa,” Amre says. Incidentally, he had played the first of his 11 Tests in that country. His debut, in Durban, was memorable to say the least. “That 103 I scored against Allan Donald, Brett Schultz, Brian McMillan, Meyrick Pringle and Omar Henry in 1992 was the highlight of my career,” he adds. Predictably, Amre fell in love with the country. “Not only did I play domestic cricket there, but I also cleared the coaching and umpires exam,” he reveals. “Despite years of isolation, the South Africans showed us what they were made of. This fascinated me. And that’s why I decided to understand their cricket structure.”
When Amre returned home in 2001, he was in for a rude shock. The BCCI categorically told him that it doesn’t “recognise” the South African system. “So I had to do undergo the Level II coaching programme all over again (Test players are exempt from giving the Level I exam). And when it was time to appear for the Level III exam, the Mumbai Cricket Association told me I couldn’t represent them as Chandrakant Pandit and Lalchand Rajput had taken the slots. So, I requested Brijesh Patel, head of the National Cricket Academy, to consider me. Thankfully, he agreed,” Amre says. And so, in 2002, Amre and some others like Rajput, Pandit, Venkatesh Prasad and Robin Singh passed the exam with flying colours. “I had never studied so hard in college. The curriculum was vast, but I did my best,” Amre says.
Amre then started an academy at Shivaji Park Gymkhana. “I trained players like Siddhesh Lad, Kevin Almeida, Shardul Thakur, Harmeet Singh and Gaurav Jathar. A few years later, the MCA asked me to if I wanted to coach the Ranji Trophy team. I agreed.” The period from 2006-07 to 2010-11 saw Amre guide Mumbai to three Ranji Trophy triumphs.
Amre, who never wanted to become a coach because he was “short-tempered”, doesn’t know how it all fell into place. Perhaps, Achrekar was an inspiration. “Achrekar Sir is a very strong, a very different personality. I can never be like him. He is a father figure to his players. He is just too great,” Amre concedes.
Why does he say so? “Listen to this incident. Everyone knows Sir has five daughters. He also fathered a son. But the poor infant died the same evening he was born. The next day, Sir was about 30 minutes late to practice,” Amre recalls. “Then, he went about his business. To him, cricket is paramount. Your personal life is secondary. As a father, I know what Sir must have gone through. And believe me, I heard this story from my Shivaji Park seniors many years later.”
For someone who tallied less than 1,000 runs in international cricket, Amre agrees he could have done a lot more as a batsman. “That’s why I feel happy when a player I coach scores a hundred. Look, when I was a player, my God was my godfather. I had a first-class average of 87 when I first played for India. But things didn’t turn out they way I would have liked them to.”
Team coach to personal coach
After spending five years with the Mumbai team, Amre went on a long break. “It got monotonous,” he says. “As someone who had coached Mumbai with great success, I could have gone to another state. But I decided to stay put in Mumbai. I knew I had to reinvent myself as a coach.”
Amre did just that. For starters, he collected as many videos as he could and watched them, one by one. “Don Bradman, Garfield Sobers, Graeme Pollock, Barry Richards, Viv Richards, Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar… I watched them all,” Amre says. So what was the underlying theme? “What I understood is that all great batsmen have something in common. Their stance, back-lift and approach may be different, but the moment they prepare to face the ball, they somehow get in line. In other words, they offer the full face of the bat to every delivery. That’s why they are great.”
As Amre delved deeper and deeper, he realised that a coach’s job was more than just giving throwdowns and finalising the playing XI. “One must find the root cause (of a problem or defect). A coach must be like a doctor,” he says. Asked why decided to play ‘doctor’ to Uthappa, Amre comes up with a straightforward answer. “I thought he was not justifying his talent.”
Amre spent three years watching videos, studying bio-mechanics, reading and devising papers and presentations. “There are three aspects to a players’ game: physical shape, mental shape and skills. Most players have two boxes ticked. A coach’s job is to ensure a player gets everything right,” Amre says
When Amre decided to take up Project Uthappa, he changed “everything” from the batsman’s stance and grip to back-lift and head position. And he also cautioned his ward that, initially, his performances would suffer. “Are you ready to go down and then up,” Amre told Uthappa. He was referring to the career graph that would witness a dip after so many fundamental changes. “Sir, I have tried everything. This is it. Now, I want you to take me to the next level,” Uthappa conceded.
Soon, Amre went about his business of “dismantling” Uthappa the batsman. “His grip was bottom-handed and locked. I asked him to ‘unlock it’ so that he could hit the ball straighter,” Amre says. “I then worked on his stance, footwork, shoulder position, head position. In short, I changed him from head to toe. It was course correction all the way through.”
How receptive was Uthappa? “Look, this is a science. The results are showing only now. Ever since we started working, people critcised me for ruining him. But Robin knew of the ‘down and up’ we had spoken of. He was quietly confident. Today, he is batting better than ever before.”
Amre says he has made Uthappa bat in different cities, on all types of wickets and against all kinds of bowlers. “One has to have cricketing smartness. You can’t play all your shots on every wicket. You may be technically sound, but you have also got to be smart,” he says.
Helping Rahane
Amre knows Rahane since this Under-17 days. It is during Amre’s time that Rahane scored 1,000-plus runs season after season. “Do you remember his Test debut?,” Amre asks. For the record, Rahane earned his maiden Test cap against Australia in New Delhi last year. India won the series 4-0, but Rahane had a forgettable outing. “He was all over the place. He got hit on the head before a rash shot cost him his wicket. It didn’t take the media too long to brand him a failure. They conveniently forgot that he had a first-class average of nearly 70 then.”
Soon, Amre took Rahane under his wings. “I had to help him with his technique. He was getting out to the incoming ball. On some occasions, he was getting caught behind. Today, he is one of the best batsmen in India,” Amre says proudly. “I remember taking him to Sachin’s place. The master told him to target the next five years. Once you play for five years, you can think of playing for 10 years. And automatically, you will have 10,000 runs under your belt.”
Rahane, who has never missed a practice session in all these years, spent 19 Tests on the bench before making his debut. “You have no idea of the number of people, including IPL franchise officials, who told me that Rahane is not ‘international material’,” Amre says. Guess they must be feeling silly now.
“If your technique is strong, nobody can stop you from scoring runs in all formats. People used to tell Ajinkya that he must bat like Virat Kohli. But I told him that God has made you like this for a reason. You can’t be Virat. So, be Ajinkya. Be the one who can bat in any situation. Today, he is just that,” Amre says.
During the World Twenty20 earlier this year, Amre employed a few baseball techniques to help Rahane hit the ball longer, harder. “It’s all about bio-mechanics. Tennis, baseball, cricket and a number of sports follow similar principles like hand-eye coordination, focus. Baseball players use their core muscles — abdomen and back — to generate power. I made some adjustments to his back-lift and he started hitting the ball better,” Amre says.
Ojha, Raina and Karthik
Amre has coached Ojha and Raina at Air India. Of late, Ojha has been dealing in double hundreds at the India ‘A’ level. Again, that is Amre at work.
“I never tell a player I want to work with him. I wait for the player to approach me. But one day, I told Naman there was a problem in his game. But he never bothered to check with me. A couple of years later, he came back,” Amre says.
When Ojha approached him, Amre put him through the same grind and made him a better player. “There wasn’t much wrong with Naman’s game. His technique was good; so was his mindset. He came across as a simple boy who was very committed, hardworking,” Amre says. Did the wicketkeeper in Ojha ever bemoan the presence of that chap called Dhoni? “I told him not to think of any competition. Just do your thing and your chance will come,” Amre told him. But for how long? “I gave him the example of Michael Hussey. And I told him that the Test cap is worth waiting for.”
So what is it that works for Amre? “The fact that I got a hundred on debut in Durban gets me respect. I guess the players believe in me. After all, there must be something in my technique and my template that seems right. There are several others who are more knowledgeable than me, but I have something called experience,” Amre says. “Whenever I get time, I discuss cricket with Sachin. Whenever I have a doubt, I call him. Like I said, I have taken Ajinkya and even Robin to him.”
Amre holds Raina in high regard. “Let’s go back to the 2011 World Cup. Yusuf Pathan was picked ahead of Raina. It was only after the group-stage matches that the team turned to Raina. Naturally, he was very low. I told him to wait for his chance,” Amre says. For the record, Gary Kirsten, the former India coach, maintains that Raina won India the World Cup with his brilliant displays against Australia and Pakistan.
Over the years, Raina has drawn flak for throwing away his chances in the Test arena. That he has a problem with the short ball is common knowledge. “But why don’t you also say that he is the second-best finisher in Team India?” Amre retorts. “Look at the way he is batting now. Do you remember how he played in the ODI series in England this year?”
Coaching, Amre says, is all about having faith in each other. “I have to be accountable. If my player fails, then it’s my failure too. People will blame me for ruining someone’s career. I know what I am doing. All my wards have got their basics right. I can happily say that.”
Not surprisingly, Amre is open to coaching India some day. “Why not?” he says.
This following episode throws light on the emphasis Amre puts on mental strength. Abhay Poyarekar, a retired customs officer and Amre’s relative, raided huge quantities of RDX at the Mumbai port in 1993. The underworld troubled him for eight years. He was provided with ‘Z’ security and won the President’s medal for bravery. “That RDX was meant to destroy Mumbai during Ganeshotsav. I took Ajinkya and Robin to this man. To me, he is a real hero. He explained how the dons harassed him and attacked his family for years together,” Amre says. Till date, Rahane gets goose bumps thinking of Poyarekar and his heroism. Cricket, after all, is just a game.
AMRE’S WARDS
Robin Uthappa
They got together two years ago. Amre changed everything in Uthappa’s game — grip, stance, head and shoulder positions, back-lift. The results are showing. Amre flies to watch him to every part of the country. During the off-season, Uthappa rents grounds by the hour in Mumbai or Bangalore. Amre joins him here too
Ajinkya Rahane
The two have known each other for over 10 years. Amre honed Rahane’s technique during his time as Mumbai coach. Now, he has helped his ward go to the ‘next’ level. He has even contributed to Rahane’s mental toughness
Naman Ojha
Ojha, Amre says, is a very hardworking lad. What he lacked was confidence. Amre gave him the example of Michael Hussey, who scored more than 10,000 runs before earning a Test cap.
Suresh Raina
Amre came to Raina’s rescue when he was feeling low during the 2011 World Cup. Yusuf Pathan was picked ahead of him. Amre told Raina to wait for his chance. Raina came good in the quarters and semis. Today, he is the second-best finisher in Team India
Dinesh Karthik
Amre took Karthik under his wings only recently. A talented wicketkeeper-batsman, Karthik approached Amre after he saw the positive impact he has had on the above players
source: http://www.dnaindia.com / DNA / Home> Sport / by Derek Abraham / Place: Mumbai, Agency: DNA / Sunday – November 09th, 2014
