Throughout his tenure as the Indian coach, Greg Chappell swore by youth. He even went to the extent of saying ‘ignore youth at your own peril.’ While it may have been difficult for some people to digest Chappell’s fascination for the youth, the composition of the present limited-overs side vindicates the Australian’s philosophy.    

“I don’t have anything to comment on that. That’s in the past and it’s for other people to make a judgement on. What I will say is you do ignore youth at your own peril, be it in sports or any undertaking. But particularly from a cricket point of view, the best teams are those that are constantly trying to improve. If you are not going forward then you are going backward, but you never stand still. A team is never a finished article, you are always trying to bring new energy, new personnel,” he detailed.

Great change

The former Australian captain, who now heads the Rajasthan Cricket Academy, said with cricket going through a great change, the future cricketer would be vastly different to the past one. “They are going to have to be athletic, agile... They are going to have to be able to withstand a lot of stress physically, mentally and emotionally. The game is going to demand more of this generation of cricketers than ever before,” he explained.
At the same time, Chappell cautioned that the blooding of youngsters through shorter forms of the game may work against them unless due care is taken. 

“Cricketers will make debuts quicker in the short forms of the game. If you look back at someone like Rahul Dravid, he had a long gestation period; we had players playing Tests before playing ODIs and Twenty20. But now it’s the other way, starting with the express form of the game. If youngsters don’t have a wide range of skills, they will struggle. To play under the media spotlight is tough. Cricket is also a game of failure and these youngsters should be tough to cope with that and come through that. This express form of cricket will burn out a lot of young cricketers early,” he warned.

The Aussie felt one of the biggest handicaps for the growth of batsmen around the world, and particularly in India, was the use of heavy bats. “Heavy bats have a huge influence on the way you move your body and manipulate that bat... get it started, stop it and control it through a range of movements. It has a huge impact on grips and footwork.

‘Handicap’

“I think the biggest handicap for learning batting in India is this trend of very heavy bats, particularly for young cricketers. If you don’t learn the correct things early, it is difficult to change later. We have to be better at developing talent and need to put them through a programme that will accelerate that development,” he elaborated.

Chappell compared the phenomenon of emergence of a clutch cricketers from outside of metros to the sudden burst of some of the best tennis players from Eastern Europe. “In Rajasthan, we are seeing a lot of boys from the outlying districts and most of the talent is coming from outside metros. There is raw talent out there. It is like in tennis, where the best players are coming in from East Europe and war-torn areas. They are hungrier and they have the drive to succeed.”