‘Wouldrather focuson others thanViratKohli’
STRAIGHT TALK South African great stresses on the need to encourage young talent in the star-studded line-up of Royal Challengers Bangalore in IPL 2019
NEW DELHI: Gary Kirsten has a tough job on hand. As head coach of Royal Challengers Bangalore, the former South African batting great will be pivotal in formulating a winning recipe for the Virat Kohliled side, one of three original franchises yet to win the Indian Premier League.
They reached the final thrice but were unable to cross the final hurdle.
As RCB prepare to play the 12th edition’s opening match at champions Chennai Super Kings on March 23, the former India World Cup-winning coach discusses Kohli, RCB bowling and his overall experience.
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We have some real potential with young bowlers. It would be a real exciting thing for me to see a young Indian bowler have a great IPL season.
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On RCB’s bowling unit
If teams are strategising how to play against us and their focus is on big players then it is our responsibility so that other players make a similar contribution.
On rivals focussing on Kohli
Excerpts:
You have coached national teams and franchise sides. What has been the biggest lesson?
T20 cricket brings a very different dynamic into the game. I compare it more now to other very popular domestic franchise sports -- like football to a large degree, baseball, NFL, basketball. These are all sports which are short in duration and have a lot of data points to them because there are so many games played every season. The role is more around building a strategy for each game, managing very talented, high-commodity individuals and trying to get them to have a sense of purpose, which every domestic franchise is doing.
When you play for your country that sense of purpose is there any way; if you are a patriotic person playing for your country is very different. In these franchises, building that sense of identity is probably our biggest challenge as a coach because form comes and goes with every team. You need a whole team to perform and not just one or two individuals in tournaments like this.
Is the basic plan to focus on one rival player the same? Like other teams on Virat Kohli?
If teams are strategising how to play against us and their focus is on big players then it would be our responsibility so that the other players make a similar contribution because every team has got skill and talent. You often see lesser players make it big in tournaments like these and that would be a real focus for us this year. We really want to see players not at the forefront of opposition’s conversation making match-winning contributions.
How has been the evolution of Kohli?
There has been so much talk around Virat. He is a great player, we know that, and I don’t think you can say much more about him. I would rather focus on RCB and on the other players. He doesn’t need to read in a newspaper that Gary Kirsten thinks he is a great player. It’s kind of irrelevant.
Unknown players often end up as one season wonders in IPL.
In sport that happens and they don’t quite get going after some time. Other teams get smart against them and build strate- gies for them and work hard. It’s the responsibility of the players to keep reinventing themselves. It’s important to build intelligence around the game. The more academic a player is around his game the better. We encourage players to be good intellectually around their game.
RCB conceded the most runs in death overs last season.
We have some real potential with young bowlers. It would be a real exciting thing for me to see a young Indian bowler have a great IPL season. We have got Navdeep Saini who has got a great season; Mohammed Siraj has been in the Indian mix.
Those guys are very exciting. It would be really nice to see them make a statement and we are going to back them. Yuzvendra Chahal remains a match-winner for us and remains an important component for us.