Meet the non-playing XI of Team India

The face of the support staff is head coach Ravi Shastri.

The Indian cricket team is on a roll. After the sensational victory in Australia against all odds earlier this year, this team has made a terrific comeback in the ongoing Test series against England, bouncing back from the shocking defeat in Chennai in the first match.

Although the key players keep changing depending on the format of the game or due to fitness issues, behind the scenes there is an army of support staff that is constantly at work helping the players prepare for challenges under all circumstances.

The face of the support staff is head coach Ravi Shastri, who doesn’t need any introduction.  An accomplished former India player himself, Shastri has worn many hats since his retirement but this perhaps is his most challenging assignment.

Batting coach: Vikram Rathour

Post the debacle of the 2019 ODI world Cup in England, Sanjay Bangar was sacked and in came another former India player, Vikram Rathour.  A giant of domestic cricket, Rathour couldn’t repeat his success as a player at the international level. However, post his retirement as a player, he has been in various coaching roles with IPL teams and domestic teams.

He has also served as a national selector in the past, but it is his new stint with the Indian team that has brought him under focus as his players rose to the occasion in Australia despite missing the services of Kohli. He has not only been honing upcoming talent such as Shubman Gill or Prithvi Shaw, but also helped the seniors, including Ajinkya Rahane and R Ashwin, re-discover their game.

Bowling coach: Bharat Arun

If the Indian bowling attack has become one of the best and perhaps the best of all-time then a lot of credit also goes to bowling coach Bharat Arun who has been with this team for almost five years.

While Arun could manage just two Test matches for India during his playing days, his work as a bowling coach has helped the likes of R Ashwin, Jasprit Bumrah and most of the pace bowlers in the current team. Arun was coach of the ICC Under-19 World Cup 2012 winning side.

In 2014, he was called up for the tour to England as India’s new bowling coach, and since then has carved a special niche as bowling coach.

Fielding coach: R Sridhar

R Sridhar faced a lot of criticism for India’s countless dropped catches on the tour of Australia. However, the team has looked sharp again in the current series. The intense effort Sridhar has been putting in with Rishabh Pant over the last couple of years is also bearing fruit, as evident from the drastic improvement in the latter’s glove work.

Physios: Nitin Patel and Yogesh Parmar

In many ways, Nitin Patel has been the quintessential Head Physiotherapist of the Indian team. His first stint with the national team lasted for more than eight years (2007-2015) and he has also spent more than a decade with the most successful IPL franchise, Mumbai Indians. Doubtless, Patel is the most trusted name among the players and was back with the Indian team after the 2019 World Cup.

Many former greats are indebted to Patel as he has mended many career-threatening injuries with his magical touch and professional conduct. Many players regard him to be as calm as MS Dhoni in pressure situations.

Patel’s workload is also shared by assistant trainer Yogesh Parmar, who sometimes stays back in Bengaluru if senior players need his services. That was the case last year with Hardik Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Shikhar Dhawan, when Parmar didn’t go to New Zealand with the national team as those players were amidst a rehab session under his guidance.

Strength and Conditioning coach: Nick Webb and Soham Desai

It certainly wasn’t easy to step into Shankar Basu’s shoes as India’s strength and conditioning coach. No less than Virat Kohli had publicly lauded Basu’s effort in transforming his perspective on fitness. When Basu decided against a contract extension after the 2019 World Cup following a four-year stint with the Indian team, New Zealand’s Nick Webb was hired after a rigorous search that included interviews with close to a dozen professionals.

So far, BCCI Head of Physical Performance Webb has made a fine impression. He has also worked with New Zealand’s women’s team and been associated with Warriors, the Auckland-based rugby league outfit.

Webb is also assisted by Soham Desai, the Strength & Conditioning Coach of the National Cricket Academy, from time to time.  Desai was an understudy to Basu and his first stint as trainer began with the Indian team on a tour of the West Indies, after the 2019 World Cup. Since Desai also frequently works with the India A team and Under-19 teams, he is more in tune with the fitness level of all the upcoming players and this helps the national team’s other support staff significantly.

Throwdown specialists: Raghu, Nuwan and Daya

Raghavindraa, simply known as Raghu, is the throwdown specialist of the Indian team. Despite his association with the Indian team for over a decade, he was in news for the first time only when he didn’t fly to the UAE to fly to Australia — he had tested positive for Covid-19 in India.

A thorough gentleman and a humble professional, Raghu has some of the most high-profile names, including Rahul Dravid, MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli, among his admirers.

He entered the Indian dressing room for the first time in 2011 and has evolved from being the training assistant on the 2014 tour of England to become the throwdown specialist owing to his stronger arm. With the special ability of being able to hurl a cricket ball at around 150 kph, Raghu has a rare and distinguished profile in the cricket world.

Since, Raghu is a right-hand throwdown specialist, the BCCI, for the first time, hired an additional hand during the 2018 Asia Cup in Dubai. Sri Lanka’s Nuwan Seneviratne has played two first-class matches. The idea behind hiring Seneviratne was to get good preparation against several left-arm fast bowlers.

Dayanand Garani’s association with the Indian team is nothing short of a fairytale. He was working with Kings XI Punjab in IPL 2020 and received an SOS from the BCCI just before he was set to head back to India because Raghu was down with Covid-19. He has gone from manning traffic on a busy Kolkata street as a Civic Police Volunteer to becoming the throwdown expert-cum-masseur for the 2020 tour of Australia.

Video analyst: Hari Prasad Mohan

Usually, the TV cameras don’t follow Indian team performance analyst Hari Prasad Mohan much since he is too busy following the video footage of his players and also keep tracks of rival players. He often sits quietly in the dressing room along with one or two coaches. They keep sharing live inputs so that an informed decision can be taken during play. A polyglot who speaks Spanish and Tamil besides Hindi and English, he shares a fantastic rapport with all the players.

Massage therapists: Arun Kanade and Rajeev Kumar

Ask any Indian player who is the first man they contact after the day’s play is over and the answer will be either Arun Kanade or Rajeev Kumar, the regular masseurs with this Indian team. Kanade had big shoes to fill when he replaced the hugely popular Ramesh Mane, who was fondly addressed as ‘Mane Kaka’, and worked with Indian team for close to decade. Kanade started as a freelancer but is now part of the regular support staff.

The other masseur, Rajeev Kumar, is so popular with the team that the likes of Ishant Sharma and Mohammed Shami celebrate their birthdays with him because they were born on September 1st, 2nd and 3^rd, respectively!