Dav Whatmore: ‘Ravi Shastri knows how to manage people’

Dav Whatmore talks about what it takes to be a good coach, how his Sri Lanka side went the distance in the 1996 World Cup, and why he decided to steer Kerala’s fortunes in the Ranji Trophy this season

The India connection: Dav Whatmore had just set a cricket centre in Chennai when the offer to coach Kerala materialised.

Dav Whatmore finds Kerala similar to Sri Lanka in many ways. The weather, the landscape, and the people remind him of the wonderful time he had in the island nation with its cricket team.

He guided Sri Lanka to its greatest sporting achievement – the World Cup victory in 1996. That triumph came against heavy odds.

The Kerala Cricket Association (KCA) was hoping he would do something similar with the Ranji Trophy team when it appointed him coach in April. The Sri Lanka-born Australian hasn’t disappointed.

Kerala has won four of its first five matches this season, and has a shot at making the knockouts. Not bad at all for a team that has underperformed with remarkable consistency for more than a decade and a half.

In an interview to The Hindu , he spoke at length about coaching and his playing days, including a memorable tour of India in 1979. Excerpts:

Why did you accept the offer to coach Kerala, which is not, by any stretch of imagination, among the glamorous teams in India’s domestic cricket?

I had decided to stop coaching international teams. That was something I had decided after discussing with my wife. I had already come to Chennai to set up the Whatmore Centre for Cricket. Then this offer from the KCA came, which I found interesting. I like the place and see this as another challenge.

You have had successes with underdogs before. You must be pleased with some of the astonishing results Bangladesh has had of late. You had faith in the team when many others wrote it off.

I had gone there after their previous coach Gordon Greenidge said the team wasn’t ready for Test cricket. At that time, they didn’t have too many opportunities to play Tests. They developed an A team and an academy. There were good competitions for the youth teams too. As the head coach, I supported all these initiatives. They have continued on that path. I spent four years of my life there. I am happy that I could contribute to the evolution of Bangladesh as a team. They have managed to produce good, strong, athletic cricketers.

Sri Lanka was already a good side when you took over, but not many expected it to win the World Cup in 1996. Did you?

Not before the tournament began. But when we beat India at New Delhi in the league phase, I felt we could be playing till the end of the tournament. It was a great team. Batting was the main strength; all the top seven could get hundreds. And we had quality spinners in Muttiah Muralitharan, Upul Chandana, and Kumar Dharmasena, besides Aravinda de Silva.

Sri Lanka was your first international assignment as a coach.

It was my first ever First Class team, in fact. I had worked at the Victorian Institute of Sport for four years when I got the offer from Sri Lanka; if it had been delayed by another day, I would have been appointed as the coach of Hampshire, as I had almost finalised an agreement with Mark Nicholas.

What makes a good coach?

A good coach needs to play a wide range of roles: a caring parent, a disciplinarian and a friend. He needs to have knowledge of a cross section of areas like psychology, physiology, nutrition. And he needs to have empathy. He has to understand people. You are working with individuals though they are a group of people. I think that is why Ravi Shastri is successful. He knows how to manage people. He has impressed me as a coach.

How do you view the Indian side?

The current Indian team under Virat Kohli is a very good one, as the results show. I find it a balanced side, too.

You are going to spend a lot of time in India. How do you look back to the tour of this country with the Australian team in 1979?

It was a tough, long tour, which lasted three months. I was a good player of spin bowling until I came here. The Indian spinners were so different.

What about the Australian spinners?

They didn’t spin [it], those days. But it wasn’t easy for them on the hard wickets there.

And yet you had some success against the Indian spinners on that tour. You made 77 and 54 in the Delhi Test and helped Australia save the match, after following on.

Yes. And I got a bad decision in that match! Another strong memory from that tour is coming on to bowl, as the fifth change, within the first hour, in the Mumbai Test!