Blog Posts by Aakash Chopra

Much emphasis has been laid on the process of preparation lately — especially after the England debacle. What is preparation? How does one prepare? These questions popped up many times during post-result analysis. While I believe preparation to be a personal prerogative, some key aspects ought to be included in the larger blueprint.

Your writer in action in a tour game against Australia A in December 2003. (AFP Photo)With India’s tour to Australia only a fortnight away, it has become imperative to answer these questions. In a three-part series, I will share with you the finer points of my preparation and the experience of the 2003-04 tour. The attempt is to provide you, the reader, with the essential perspective and insight necessary to view the game better.

In August 2003, when I had recently recuperated from a knee surgery, I got a call from Virender Sehwag and Ashish Nehra enquiring the status of my fitness. John Wright had asked them to make that call and also prepare me to be called for the India camp slated to start soon.

At the camp in Bangalore, my physical Read More »from Preparing for Australia 101

Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman.Amidst the fuss around the tour of Australia — being touted as the battle royale, a fight for ascendancy and honour, a reiteration of our grit, and all the rest — we’re missing a far more intriguing point.

This will perhaps be the last time we’d be seeing the three greats — Tendulkar, Laxman and Dravid — together in an overseas series. That’s a poignant thought for ardent fans who await the surfacing of Indian cricket’s new sentinels.

With them, we looked secure. Now as their inevitable goodbyes draw close, there’s a dire urgency to find their replacements. Perhaps, there will never be like-for-like replacements.

The reason isn’t lack of talent — we have enough to be proud of — but the strain on players. Juggling three formats will take its toll and it would be naïve to believe that current players will last two decades in international cricket. Hence it would be advisable to not look too far ahead and focus on immediate replacements.

With thousands of runs scored every First Class

Read More »from The trinity's last stand

Virender Sehwag’s triumphs need no assertion, especially in Test match cricket - his two splendid triple Sehwag arrives at the training session at the WACA in Perth ahead of the third Test.centuries (I was at the other end during his first triple century against Pakistan in Multan) and quite a few double hundreds endorse his allegiance to cricket’s purist format. Amidst a plethora of such consummate innings, stand out two that define his character - first, the 195 he scored at the MCG in 2003-04, and second, the innings of 151 runs that he played at Adelaide four years later against the same opposition.
 
Unfortunately though, four years since that stupendous innings, Sehwag hasn’t managed to hit a single century outside the sub-continent - something that saddens his fans, including me, to no limits. Has he got sucked into the reputation of batting the way ‘Sehwag is supposed to bat’? It isn’t that he’s batting poorly - the timing is still there and also the hunger (an ODI double century proves that). So what is it?
 
Sehwag is known to be an entertainer of very fine Read More »from Sehwag Must Fire For India To Make A Comeback

Starting From Scratch

As we sat in our dressing room on a cold November day of 2011, at the end of the match against Karnataka, the pressure of being the defending champions had already evaporated. We may have been the Ranji champions last season, had started as favourites this season too — but the opposition had outplayed us in every department now, that too in our own backyard. This game, we’d saved by the skin of our teeth — our fairytale journey had indeed ended, we realized that it was time to wake up and smell the coffee.

Winning the title the previous year meant absolutely nothing this year — we weren’t entitled to any favours. If anything, our status as defending champions made the oppositions bring their best game to the park. We needed to step up a few notches to stay relevant in the tournament. Since we had seen the worst (Karnataka piled over 600 runs and enforced the follow-on) in the very first game, we vowed to not throw in the towel regardless of the situation.
 
Hammered

Read More »from How Rajasthan held their ground

(This is Part 2 of the story of Rajasthan's successful title defense | Read Part 1 | Part 3)

Battle for Survival

One look at the pitch made Jaydev Shah, Saurashtra’s captain, ask in jest if it was a cricket pitch or a billiard’s table. Yes, it was a bit too green and also a bit too moist for our liking but these were exceptional circumstances. We, Rajasthan, had reached a stage where if we hadn’t strived for the maximum points (six) from the Saurashtra game, we would have had to bid goodbye to the knockouts. It was a different matter, that even a win would have given us only an outside chance. Consequently, and with fingers crossed, we dished out a green top knowing fully well that if we lost the toss we would be asked to bat first and then the hope of an outright win would fall flat on its face. But the gamble was worth taking, for our batting was still in good form.
 
As it always happens, when the home team tinkers with the conditions to suit their cause, we lost the toss and were asked

Read More »from When Haryana gave themselves away

(Excerpted from Out of the Blue, by Aakash Chopra, published by Harper Collins, 2011, Rs 299, with the publisher's permission)

‘Will Tamil Nadu stop Rajasthan’s dream run?’ queried a news headline a few mornings before the big match. Later that day, a friend from Chennai called to thank the Rajasthan boys for defeating Mumbai and paving the way for an inevitable Tamil Nadu victory. During the net sessions too, we found the Tamil Nadu team looking super-confident. The star-studded line-up wore a look of obvious superiority.

Somehow, and to our utter amazement, nobody—not the media, not the fans, not even the fraternity itself—was ready to recognize us as a potential threat. Even after we’d beaten the best in the business and won the last seven games on the trot, on merit. An underdog toiling hard and taking on the world is fun to watch, but to believe it could go the distance and beat the favourites takes quite another leap of faith.

***

Until a few days ago, while playing Mumbai, and in

Read More »from Rajasthan's leap of faith

Indian domestic cricket is a complicated creature. The scorecards, the fat batting averages, the results conceal more than they reveal to the untrained eye. That is why you need an insider to guide you through its many complexities. Someone, who has waged many cricketing battles over the years, or someone who can talk about the sport with the authority of an academician. Luckily for us, there’s Aakash Chopra who straddles the divide with ease.

Rajasthan, where Chopra is an opening batsman, became the fifth team to win the Ranji Trophy two years in a row. Two seasons ago, they were the wooden spooners. They turned it around. Importing players from other states (including Hrishikesh Kanitkar as captain), and hiring a support staff to manage the team off the field put the onus on the players to deliver.  Deliver they did.

Chopra’s recently-released book, Out Of The Blue, begins with these poignant words: “When you are Rajasthan, last in the Plate division, never having won the title,

Read More »from Acknowledgement of performance is important: Chopra

Read Part 1 | Part 2

Our semi-final against Haryana ended in two days — preposterous for a match of that stature. The flip side was that we were left with a couple of choices to toy with —firstly, the option of taking the six-hour ride back to Jaipur for some practice before the final in Chennai, or fly straight well in advance to acclimatize. We did the latter — thanks to the accommodating Tamil Nadu Cricket Association.

Last year, Vadodara hadn’t been as convivial — they’d told us to delay our arrival, since the practice pitches hadn’t been readied. Our experience in the circuit told us that that was a rather lame excuse to disrupt our preparations, but we couldn’t do much about it. We were happy that TNCA obliged.
 
Playing in Chennai requires skill modification – the pitch made of red soil has extra bounce and assistance for spinners – but the city also needs you to get used to the heat, especially if you’ve just finished a game in freezing Lahli. Our preparation, not sure if by

Read More »from How Tamil Nadu's slow pitch ploy backfired