Sridhar adopted a minimalist coaching strategy, emphasizing that sometimes less intervention is more effective.
Former India fielding coach R Sridhar has stated that getting along with star batter Rishabh Pant and finding a way to work with the wicketkeeper batter proved to be a tough nut to crack initially. The 54-year-old cricketer, who was part of the Indian cricket team for seven years, said that he hit a bit of a roadblock with the 26-year-old cricketer when he went on to burst into the scene due to their contrasting methods and had to make a big change to reach a common ground.
Notably, Rishabh Pant made his India debut in a T20I against England in February 2017 and a year later played his first Test match against the same side at Trent Bridge, Nottingham. However, Sridhar, as a fielding coach, head coach Ravi Shastri, and captain Virat Kohli were leading the Men in Blue’s fielding revolution ahead of full speed, and managing Rishabh Pant was quite a daunting task.
Also Read: After SKY, another Mumbai Indians top star ruled out of first Duleep Trophy game
The wicketkeeper batter had a magnificent start with Team India in 2018, as he went on to hammer a century in just his third Test and followed it up with another ballistic century during the 2018-19 Border-Gavaskar Trophy. In between, the stylish left-handed batter hammered 92 runs against the West Indies too. However, later some time, his batting took off, and Pant struggled with keeping. Meanwhile, it took time, as mentioned and revealed by R. Sridhar, as he had to fall back on a famous coaching principle, and with the help, he and Pant were able to develop a mutual understanding to take the game to another level.
“There’s another coaching theory. Give them what they want, till the time they take what you give. I started changing my style of coaching. Usually more is less, but with an athlete like Rishabh, less is more. At that level, at a very elite level, more often than not, less is more, especially when it comes to the technical side of it. They know; there are geniuses; they are champions,” R Sridhar said on Anubhav Talks.
Also Read: Star India batter set to be ignored for Bangladesh Test series
For more updates, follow CricXtasy on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Telegram and YouTube
