The art of IPL scouting

Once the domestic season starts, we are always on the road, says Malolan Rangarajan

Malolan Rangarajan (right, first row) with the RCB management after the mega auction in Bengaluru in the second week of February.

Harshal Patel was the Purple Cap winner last year with 32 wickets.

Glenn Maxwell was RCB’s most successful batsman with 513 runs.

My shift from being an active first-class cricketer to the head of scouting and fielding coach of Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) is straight out of a movie scene. I was still playing cricket when I applied for the role in 2019. I made a presentation. It spoke about eradicating recency, regency, and acquaintance biases. I had a road map for one year. I had to build something from scratch because there was a change in support staff when I joined. We placed the impetus on domestic cricket and hired more scouts.

It is a high-profile job and I am lucky to be doing it. Expectations are challenging to handle. We might miss out when it comes to spotting some talents. Or when a player is excellent, we may have no slot in our team for him. For example, it was easy for people to say we should have picked a left-handed player last year. We didn’t do it because we had Padikkal doing well as an opener. In some cases, the price range of the player doesn’t suit our plans.

At RCB, I live by the mantra ‘multiple eyes, multiple times. We want the player to be watched by all our scouts. Only then do we aggregate the responses and come to a decision. That’s how we bring objectivity in the process.

Scouts suffer from burnout as well. It’s tough to see games day in and day out. We might have to travel to different places in a week and the number of matches we watch keeps increasing.

Once the domestic season starts, we are always on the road. After a point, you become less efficient because your brain gets fried. I ensure our scouts get breaks. In a hectic schedule, I make sure one watches the bowlers while the other focuses on the batsmen. This method brings balance to our job.

While RCB has four scouts including myself, franchises don’t have a set number in mind while hiring scouts. They work round the year, watching players closely wherever they are playing. As for international players, we have a system in place. I depend on support staff members, who are coaches of teams in the other franchise leagues. I am part of a team in the Caribbean Premier League while our batting and spin coach S Sriram is Australia’s spin coach. Our bowling coach Adam Griffith is part of the Big Bash League. So this way, we keep an eye out for the players for IPL while we are at these tournaments.

Mega auction 2022

RCB had absolute clarity on whom to pick and why. We were clear on where we wanted to experience and where we wanted flamboyance in the squad. There wasn’t any head-scratching at the auction table. The process was clear to the last detail.

Personally, I wasn’t nervous. I compare my cricket to my school studies. If you prepare well for a mathematics exam, you can see the answers to the questions in front of you even before you start writing. You face pressure only when you are in a situation you haven’t anticipated and prepared for.

In a small auction, you pick three-four players. In the mega auction, we only have three or four players and we are looking to pick 18-19 players. That’s the difference. You need to look at more than seven or eight options for each role. So collating those names is the first task.

In some categories, we had only three options shortlisted because the difference in quality between them and the rest of the players was huge.

So our message to the management was to get one player from the three. Then we tried to understand how many teams would bid for those players. That’s when we realised the supply was low and demand high, meaning we had to shell out more money.

Facing criticism

Obviously, there is going to be criticism about whatever we do. I won’t go out and justify what we have done and whether the spending was worth it. The proof is in the pudding. So let’s wait for the IPL to begin. There was enough reasoning behind choosing each player. People were hurt and sentimental about missing their favourite players. But our aim was to be pragmatic. We do a post-season review of our team. Our picks this time are based on what worked and what didn’t in the last season. The intention was to get as many RCB players as possible. But you need to deal with reality as well.

We haven’t won a title yet. So we are absolutely grateful to our fans. That said, auction dynamics can be tricky. Yes, there were players who were bought cheap. If we had waited for them, we faced the risk of being outbid. We had to decide what we thought was best for the team. We believe we have a team with flexibility, youth, experience and flamboyance.

Who is Rawat?

There was a mystery around who Anuj Rawat was when we bought him for Rs 3.4 crore. He has played for the country in the under-19 category. We have been watching him since then. He gives us great flexibility in batting. He has the ability to bat from opening to No 6. He is also a wicketkeeper and a fine fielder. He is a left-hander with brute power. People don’t know about him because he hasn’t played many first-class and IPL games. But as a scout, my job is to recognise players with potential and invest in them.

Hitting the target

Harshal Patel and Glenn Maxwell didn’t have great seasons before they joined RCB last season. That’s where inputs and analysis from the scouting team matters. To make pacer Siraj (Mohammed) a bit more effective, we needed to find someone who could do the job for us in the death overs. We aimed for a medium pace all-rounder from the domestic circuit.

Other franchises used Harshal as a middle-over option. He has got a dipping yorker and a slower one so we felt he could give us some balance in the bowling department. We made data on his dip balls and slower ones and shared the encouraging results with the management. Remember, we are just decision aiders and not decision-makers.

After the 2020 season, we realised our middle order lacked strength. So we brought in Maxwell. Our data told us that if he played in a specific slot and a particular situation in a match, he would do well. Our scouting inputs included what he had in him to do well. For example, we had observed his range of shots against spinners.

As for Shahbaz, his background check convinced us. Even before he did well for Bengal in January last year, we had spotted him, way back in 2019. We needed a left-arm spinner who could bat and also make a difference in the field. He comes from a humble background, and hadn’t got a chance to represent his state of Haryana. He left home to go to Bengal, an unknown territory, and played for the senior team when he was 24-25. Such players, when pushed against the wall, come out trumps because they have seen more difficulty in life than in cricket.

Morris is a gifted player who has unfortunately been troubled by injuries in the past. But he met our requirements. Sometimes you need to believe in such players. Scouting, hence, is also about resource allocation. You allocate the players in the best slot in the team. I think our process has produced encouraging results as we reached the play-offs two times consecutively (2020 and 2021).

Why so few Karnataka players?

One thing we need to understand is Karnataka are a powerhouse in domestic cricket. So it’s not easy to get their players because we have to spend big money.

We are always looking for Karnataka players. Just because we didn’t bid for some players it doesn’t mean we don’t want them. At that point, our strategy was something else. What people see on TV during the auction is an independent view.

We have gifted all-rounder Aneeshwar Gautam, who we had identified even before he became an U-19 World Cup winner. Then there is another youngster, Luvnith Sisodia, with fine batting skills. He hasn’t played for two seasons for Karnataka after making his debut in 2018-19 but we feel he can make a difference.

Fielding change

“To catch or field a ball that comes straight to you is your duty. We have gone a step further by trying to catch or field a ball that seems impossible. We have started to have brilliant acts on the field. This is the shift in mindset I have introduced in the team in my capacity as fielding coach,” says Malolan.

(As told to Vivek M V. Malolan Rangarajan is a former Tamil Nadu skipper and bowling all-rounder. The off-break bowler has 136 wickets from 47 first-class games with a best of 7/135 in an innings).