FREAKY CHAKRA

It’s been a long, busy and unusual morning for Sri Lankan cricket’s head coach Jerome Jayaratne. Instead of interacting with youngsters in grass-stained cricketing gear at the academy, he is meeting men in formal suits and polished leather shoes in a conference hall. Jerome has been conducting interviews to pick an assistant coach and it’s quite evident that the scrutiny has been intense as he rubs his tired eyes before starting the conversation.

He is keen to get the right guy for the vital position at the ‘freak factory’ that repackages raw, out-of-the-box cricketers as international heroes. Jerome is the current head of the system that has produced unconventional cricketers such as Muttiah Muralitharan, Sanath Jayasuriya, Lasith Malinga and now Ajantha Mendis. And, as one takes a look at the display window of the academy, one finds that the supply-line isn’t going to stop any time soon. A Malinga lookalike, a leggie who delivers the ball from an awkward angle, and a pacer who till yesterday was a star on the tennis-ball circuit, are a few of the ‘works in progress’. In times of seveal stereotypical cricketers flooding the international market, the Sri Lankan Cricket system’s knack of regularly finding someone unorthodox is amazing.

“Except in New Zealand, the pitches around the world are going flat. In South Africa, too, they’re fast but still flat. We realised that finger spinners are being hit out of the game. One now needs somebody who is a very good wrist spinner and gives the ball a good rip, or someone who is totally unorthodox. And once we find someone who’s different, we see to it that we push him to the top level,” says Jayaratne.

SCOUTING WITH CARE
It sounds perfect in theory but the crucial practical hurdle for the scheme to work is to first spot that ‘different’ bowler. For this, the Sri Lankan board has about 700 active coaches spread across the country, who are all linked to the national academy. The complex network explains how tough it would be for a talented cricketer to go unnoticed. Head coach Jayaratne has national coach Trevor Bayliss and the Lanka A coach under him, along with the national pace and spin coaches and their assistants.
There is a Coaching Education Department with three members, looking after batsmen, pacers and spinners, who are under-studies of the national pace and spin coaches. The coaches from the ‘education department’ travel to provinces — comprising of three to four districts — on regular scouting trips. Helping them are coaches with provinces, districts and schools who have a ready data of players from their region. With such a labyrinth spread over the small island, where virtually all districts or villages are wired, the red lights frequently flicker at the academy in Colombo when an unusual talent is spotted. With the coaches having a common agenda, uniformity in the system is maintained.
That’s the reason Sri Lankan wicketkeeper Kumar Sangakkara salutes the system when he speaks about the spate of unorthodox players in his country. “Our cricketing structure allows these cricketers to blossom. That was how Malinga was discovered and that’s how there will always be someone who doesn’t go by the book. At times stylised coaching can be problem but we have a flexible system,” he says.
Sangakkara gives another reason for why cricketers with varied styles reach the top level in Sri Lanka. “There are several players in our country who take to serious cricket a bit late. By the time they come to the academy they already have their own style that might not necessarily be the conventional one,” he says. And with the coaches making only minor changes to their natural style, the world — programmed to seeing players imitating the MCC coaching manual — sits up to take notice.

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