Performance appraisal of outgoing Indian bowling coach Joe Dawes

Joe Dawes

Indian cricket has witnessed bowling coaches come and go, but seldom have we been able to decipher whether the person in the ‘hot ‘seat’ has indeed done the ‘job’ expected of him by the wise men of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

The end of the road for Dawes

India’s latest outgoing bowling coach Joe Dawes’s journey with Team India more or less ended with the BCCI not coming out in the open whether the Australian had performed his duties as per expectations. There are insinuations that Dawes, a former Queensland fast bowler, was asked to pack his bags from India citing ‘language barrier’ as the one of the reasons for him having to slam the exit door on the BCCI. Of course, there is also an ambiguity in India as to whether a bowling coach is ‘fired’ or has left the job of his own volition.

Dawes’s job did come under the scanner after India lost the Test series against England 1-3 after having taken the lead with a victory at Lord’s. One has to understand that foreign coaches often find the ‘long time being away from home’ difficult to cope with and on quite a few occasions we have seen coaches across the globe stepping down for this reason. India’s 2011 World Cup winning coach Gary Kirsten is a striking example.

Dawes, a former policeman, never quite established himself in the Queensland side largely because the state side had the likes of frontline Aussie seamers Michael Kasprowicz and Andy Bichel, who regularly featured in the final XI leaving little room for Dawes to showcase his prowess coupled with a knee injury.

Interestingly, Dawes has done his best to paint an ‘all is well’ picture stating that his India exit was an amicable one. The Aussie replaced South African Eric Simmons (former South African national coach), who had left the job as bowling coach after India were handed 0-4 whitewashes in England and Australia in the 2011-12 season. Again, the South African did not spare any effort in stating that he left the job on his own and was not dumped as we are made to feel every time the national team comes off a poor tour or tournament.

Poor record away from home

As India’s bowling coach, Dawes did play his part in India winning 10 out of the 21 Tests the country featured during his tenure. It is pertinent to mention that although India did win 10 out of the 21 Tests played during Dawes’s stint as bowling coach, nine of those wins came at home, where spinners often have a field day, leaving our seamers to twiddle their thumbs.

The role of Dawes comes into question when one observes he hasn’t quite been able to get the best out of the boys on overseas tours – he was part of the national team on overseas tours of South Africa, New Zealand and England over the past year, but the team lost five out of the nine Tests, winning once and drawing thrice. By any stretch of imagination, Dawes’s efforts as bowling coach were far from being outstanding.

To be fair to Dawes, he never had a settled bowling combination to work on. It was his early days as India bowling coach that talented youngsters like Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mohammed Shami made their Test debuts against Australia and West Indies. Seasoned bowler Zaheer Khan and quickie Umesh Yadav were in and out of the side either owing to poor form or injuries, which did not make his job easy as there were constant chopping and changing of seamers. Ishant Sharma was erratic for most part. Often leaving us with a question’ when will did bloke shoulder the responsibility of a senior bowler’ until he came good on the tours of New Zealand and England.

Moments Dawes can be proud of

Of course, Dawes can feel proud about the way Bhuvneshwar Kumar has grown in stature as an international bowler, but questions will always be asked whether he was able to ‘adequately mentor’ the young bowlers in the side. Mohammed Shami burst on the scene like the ‘biggest thing to have happened to Indian cricket’, but on the tour of New Zealand and England he started to show signs of losing his consistency and zip, which made him one of the most-talked-about bowlers in world cricket.

As far as the one-dayers are concerned, India winning the 2013 ICC Champions Trophy in England is perhaps one of the big moments of Dawes as bowling coach. It needs mentioning that India failed to reach the finals of two consecutive Asia Cups (2012 and 2014) let alone winning it, which must be seen as a big red mark on his bowling coaching stint.

We have so often seen that bowling coaches in India are given the pink slip – rather their non-performance for obvious reasons comes to the fore when a disastrous tourney befalls the national team. Former India seamer Venkatesh Prasad, whose services as bowling coach was terminated after India’s poor campaign in the 2009 T20 World Cup in England and the 2009 ICC Champions Trophy in South Africa. Eric Simmons left the job after those 0-4 drubbings in England and Australia and the Pataudi Trophy in England appeared to be the last straw for Dawes.

Looking ahead to the future, one is not sure whether BCCI has plans to fill this bowling coach vacancy through another foreigner. With the World Cup happening next year, and with the BCCI having recently appointed Bharat Arun, Sanjay Bangar and R Sridhar as assistant coaches, it does appear that the board would in all probability, stick to this combination at least till the 2015 World Cup.