Forming a team culture, building bonding habits and dealing with everything realistically can be a tough combination of tasks. Successful teams or captains get it right. The Indian T20I team under Suryakumar Yadav is an example of that.
In a chat with Boria Majumdar of RevSportz after the Asia Cup final, Surya got into the details of what this job is about and how they get it done. He spoke about the practices followed in the dressing room and how they celebrated after beating Pakistan in that thriller.
“The player who has not got the player of the match award gets an impact-player medal in the dressing room, and has to speak for five minutes on how they felt,” revealed Surya. “It was Shivam Dube this time, who bowled with the new ball and (he) hasn’t done it a lot previously. He batted when it was needed the most,” said the captain of the unheralded hero of the match.
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The players respect the work done by the support staff. It’s a thankless job, which is seldom highlighted when the players are celebrated after a marquee triumph. Surya spoke about what they do to ensure there are right vibes. He disclosed that a ‘medal’ was presented to the ‘impact player’ by a non-playing member of the contingent.
“We have made it a rule that all the support staff — the guys behind the scenes, who get the batters, bowlers and all-rounders ready for the game — will deliver the medals to the players with a sweet speech. Gauti bhai (Gautam Gambhir) has made this a rule. You must have seen the speech by Raghu bhai (Raghavendra Dwivedi, throwdown specialist), so different sorts of characters come into the light because of this.”
The 35-year-old disclosed that he thanked his team and went on to add captaincy is not about being nice all the time. Teammates have to be told harsh truths and both the player and the captain have to be aware that things will not always be pleasant. They both have to realise that this is for the team.
“Thanked them for coping with me on the ground. Though I’m there for everyone, I have to be real with them and tell them the truth... I cannot keep it inside me, even though the player doesn’t talk to me for a day or two. When the player comes back to you on the third day, they realise that it was for their betterment.”
Surya also mentioned that he told his boys to soak in the success and get back to work after that.
“Let’s enjoy the taste of this victory. Let’s understand what happened in the last 15 days, what we did special... Let’s see what we can do better to become the best team because even after winning, there are a lot of areas where we would have to improve.”
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