New vistas in coaching

Hi there,

I read with some amusement this morning about Ashley Giles being appointed the spin coach for England. Spin coach? The next thing you'll hear about is a coach for middle-order batsmen and a coach for how-to-field at deep square leg. Are professional cricketers representing International countries being coached on basics or these coaches are supposed to guide them at their game and correct flaws as and when they appear?

New Zealand and Sri Lanka have both got thorough thrashings at the hands of their hosts. It's a phenomenon extremely difficult to explain. Both Sri Lanka and the Kiwiz have decent bowling sides and atleast a resistant batting line up. It's the resolve to dig deep when faced with rampaging attacks that has been lacking with the visitors. Hopefully Anil's Indians will given the Aussies a better fight - that's all that one can hope for since Aussies at home seem to be notching up 500+ scores in less than 8 hours on a regular basis these days.

I hear that the subject of an Indian coach has again cropped up. Venkatesh Prasad and Robin Singh have been playing decent supplementary roles on the sidelines and Rajput has pedigree enough to choose his words carefully at media briefings. The choice is between celebrity coaches (who feel compelled to upstage other celebrities within the team) and a set of blokes who have played the game at the apex level but are not trying to theorize too much when it comes to supporting the performance of the current team.