10 takeaways from Rahul Dravid's MAK Pataudi Lecture

Former Indian Test captain Rahul Dravid delivered the annual MAK Pataudi lecture on Tuesday and as he did at the Bradman Oration a few years earlier, he impressed everyone with his thoughts on the game.Being the current coach of the India A and India U19 teams, the 42-year-old spoke a lot about cricket among the youth of the country. He asked the state associations in India to prioritise promoting the game to youngsters.Here are the top takeaways from Dravid’s lecture:

#1 On the current state of Indian cricket

“Indian cricket at the moment is in a state of both enormous popularity and considerable reflection. It is blessed with great resources, financial and human, and is currently trying to arrive at a consensus over the best way possible to make the most of what we have.

“Indian cricket’s economic strength is both the envy of the world and if I may say so, some of its resentment.

“We are at a moment in our history where we have every reason to be optimistic, but where we must strive to be visionary leaders of the world game, working with equal parts foresight and empathy.

“At times like these, we need the wisdom of our elders and the energy of our young cricketers to do what is best for Indian cricket and the game at large. For a few weeks now, I have thought about what kind of advice would Tiger Pataudi, one of our most wise elders, have offered us.”

#2 On meeting Tiger Pataudi

“When I did meet him, one afternoon at his home in Delhi almost 20 years ago, I was struck by two things: the first was an utter lack of bitterness about what he had been dealt with by destiny: to have the world at your feet as a highly-accomplished 21 year old sportsman and to then lose sight in one eye at the point your career was just about to take off. To then handle that, find a way to continue playing at a level that made a difference not merely to his team, but to his country’s cricket.

“The second feature that struck me was the absence of any “in my day” kind of talk. There was no excessive nostalgia in him, he had a great positivity about modern cricket. He was not unnecessarily critical of the modern player, believing that cricket had improved in every aspect. He was incisive, analytical and objective. He took great pride in Indian cricket and how far it had travelled.”

#3 On football and cricket

“In terms of team sport you experience, football, in which you would normally play every time you turn up at practice, are running around and kicking a ball. You get to wear colourful shirts, with different names on their backs. Messi one day, Ronaldo the next.

“Then there’s cricket: which at the start doesn’t even seem natural. You have to stand sideways holding a bat and even when given a ball, you cannot throw it. Throw, you are told, is a very bad word. You about six or seven years old. When getting into sport, it is hardly surprising that you will find football more attractive.”

#4 On youth cricket when he played

“Wake up at 5:30. Get ready, quick breakfast, travel a good 30 kilometres to the ground. Play the match and get back home by 6 pm if the traffic hasn’t been too bad. Here’s the toughest part, which is also the same.

“At that match, as a young nine or ten-year-old cricketer, sometimes you don’t even play. Sometimes you get out the first ball and have nothing to do for the rest of the day.

“On worse occasions, the umpire gives you a bad decision because you were batting too slow in an improbable chase and just delaying his return home.

“Sometimes, you just do nothing the whole day, get shouted by your coach for not giving the star player water, the instant he asked for it. At some point, how could no ten-year-kid, ask himself or herself, if it’s worth all the effort? What is the modern parent’s view of this situation? They look at cricket and say that’s a lot of time away from home.”

#5 On cricket competing with other sports

“I feel that strongly because I can see more Indian children in the cities taking up other sports. Cricket is not their first game anymore. A leading sports equipment manufacturer tells me that in the last 4-5 years, the percentage of sales of cricket equipment in the children’s category, has gone down when compared to the sales of footballs, table tennis and badminton racquets and swimming gear.

“This is great for India’s sporting ecosystem; having been involved with a few Olympic and Paralympic athletes, it is very gratifying to see young children attracted to a range of other sport.

“The cricketer in me is a little apprehensive about this trend. Not because other sports are getting more popular which is terrific, but because we may not be doing enough to attract children to cricket and from there, we could be losing out some talented youngsters and future fans of the game.

“You may ask, has not cricket always been a tough sport to learn and teach? Despite that, has it not remained India’s No.1 sport for a long time? So why should we worry now? I agree with much of that. That is the situation on the ground today.”

#6 On Sachin Tendulkar

“Sachin was different. Talent-wise, he was a freak. Everything about his rise to the Indian team, the inevitability of his success was beyond the ordinary. It was phenomenal and to us who were his age, it was almost scary.

“What people tend to forget is that Sachin had a great support system. His family were supportive and caring, his elder brother was always there to guide him, his coach Ramakant Achrekar was more than a coach, a mentor – in life and on the pitch, teaching him how to hold the bat, driving him to games.

“Sachin was lucky that he had this vast umbrella of support and I dare say and he would agree, he wouldn’t have survived and prospered if not for it.”

#7 On how children should be coached

“Rather than expect our best talent to come flocking to our junior cricket nurseries, we first need to have a clear, detailed plan. A blueprint for our junior cricket.

“Let’s go through cricket one step at a time: our children start out, some as young as five, at a private cricket academy, where there is no shortage of man power, and as many coaches as we can find. Drive through Bangalore in the summer and every 5kms you will go past a cricket camp buzzing with activity.How can that be bad?

“To start with, there is a certain fundamental discrepancy at work here.

“The age group that gives academies its biggest revenues is the youngest – the beginners, age five upwards. Yet they are paid the least attention. Usually, it is the junior-most coach who works with the hardest to handle youngest kids. Kids that age can’t be stuck into the nets and expected to obediently do drills. Five year olds need to be entertained for the entire duration of their training and be taught skills as part of that enjoyment.

“The youngest coach, hard-working and committed he may be, is often given 20 children between 5-7 year olds to handle. Never mind twenty, try handling five. If we check, there’s a good chance the coach has not undergone any specialised training in working with children. Nor will there be any official coaching certification about the level of his skills. He could be training kids using methods he learnt from his coach more than a decade ago.

“The youngest coach shouldn’t be working with the youngest wards; it should in fact be the other way around. In a fascinating book called “The Talent Code”, writer Daniel Coyle talks about how greatness across many fields, - be it sport, music, science - is not only ‘born’ it is grown.”

#8 On changing the way age-group matches are played

“Recently, the KSCA conducted an U-14 league tournament, made up of 50-over games. In one game the score was some 325 for 1, there were 2-3 double hundreds and a few more big hundreds in that tournament. I want to ask AB de Villiers if he scored double hundreds in one-day games at 12-13? Because at that age, I would just about get to a 100 in 50 overs.

“At that under-14 match where the score was 325-1, ask yourself what did the eight other players on the batting team do all day? At age group tournaments of this level, there need to be strict guidelines to allow more children to participate, rather than have the more accomplished kids to rack up big centuries. Those are important, yes, but in selection matches or zonal games. In school and club cricket, there should be some rules to even out the game-time available to everyone.

“When an eleven is picked, there are four kids on the bench who have taken a day off from school to sit on the sidelines and do nothing. Our junior cricket needs to think of options – rolling substitutions like in football, or a rotational system in batting or bowling, where everyone is given a chance. Just as an example: maybe batsmen could retire after scoring a 50 (or a 30?) and return only after their side has lost 3 more wickets. Bowlers should be allowed to bowl a maximum of 1/3rd of the total overs instead of 1/5th .

“We know some of these policies are followed in other cricketing nations, it is time we act too. The longer we take, the more talent is going to be drained away from our cricket. ”

#9 On cheating in sports

“I think of this overage business as dangerous and even toxic and to me gives rise to a question: If a child sees his parents and coaches cheating and creating a fake birth certificate, will he not be encouraged to become a cheat? He is being taught to lie by his own elders. “

“At 14 it may be in the matter of the age criteria, at 25 it may be fixing and corruption. How are the two different in any way? In both cases, is it not blatant cheating?

“What do we play sport for? Not merely exercise – then we could run forever or get onto a cross trainer or an exercise bike. We play sport for the all-round lessons it teaches us, for its ability to improve not merely our physical skills but to expand our minds as well. To learn life skills – about discipline, honesty, ethics, fair play, teamwork.

“Age-fudging and illegal bowling actions are mere shortcuts to gain personal advantage for a brief period of time, rather than what sport is about - personal improvement over a career and from there, over a lifetime.

“How will a sport survive if its finest values – of honest effort, persistence, a respect for the rules, the acceptance of defeat - itself become redundant? How will a sport survive if everyone is cheating at every stage?”

#10 On bringing kids to cricket

“I have seen some good initiatives put into place – like the BCCI’s My Debut Match, which encourages parents to bring children to games. It was a pity that only one day’s play was possible in Bangalore when the KSCA had decided to bring in 5000 school kids to the Test.

“I read that Justice Mudgal who is in charge of the organisation of the Delhi Test, wanted free tickets to be distributed to children whose parents couldn’t afford to bring them to the game. This is forward thinking. It is these children in our cities who could grow up in the next decade or two to become India’s future leaders – in the corporate world, policy-makers, heads of industry.

“I strongly believe that these young kids are the first generation of Indians who could be growing up without a deep personal connection to the game. Because they have other options. My generation, the post 1983-genreration, grew up with cricket and cinema as our only forms of leisure. Cricket was talked about, watched on television at home, or played at an amateur level at picnics, we went to matches with fathers and uncles and cousins.

“Today’s children have many, many other options. They will grow up to be the thought leaders and opinion makers and fund-managers. It is why Indian cricket must reintroduce its children to the game and its magic all over again. They are a very, very serious audience.”