IPL SPECIALS

Helping players find best answers, the Paddy Upton way

by Tristan Holme • Last updated on

Upton is making waves as a head coach in various T20 leagues around the world. © BCCI

Paddy Upton has developed a reputation for doing things differently to most cricket coaches. Having originally made a name for himself when he worked alongside Gary Kirsten, taking India to the top of the Test rankings and to a World Cup win on home soil, he is now making waves as a head coach in Twenty20 cricket.

The tenth edition of the Indian Premier League will be Upton's sixth as a head coach - having previously worked alongside Rahul Dravid at the Rajasthan Royals, the pair is now in charge of the Delhi Daredevils. He is also the head coach of Sydney Thunder, who he helped to the Big Bash League title last year, and Lahore Qalandars. In a chat with Cricbuzz, he spoke in depth about his coaching methods, what it takes to succeed in the IPL, and how Delhi are looking for the coming season.

Do you see yourself as a coach or a mentor, and do you see a distinction between the two when it comes to cricket these days?

The distinction that I think is relevant is between coaching, mentoring, advising, instructing and abdicating.

Instructing is: I know, let me tell you what to do.

Advising is: I know. Let me make a suggestion and leave the decision up to you (whereas with instructing it's not your call).

Mentoring can only happen with a wise senior with a specific domain or content knowledge, passing on information about what he did to a grateful junior. So Gary Kirsten can mentor an opening batsman in Test cricket, he can't mentor a No. 7 or spin bowler. Allan Donald can't mentor a spin bowler nor can he mentor a swing bowler in T20 cricket. And mentoring is, 'When I was in that situation, this is what I did.' It leaves the other person to figure it out and connect it to what they do. When a Gary Kirsten is mentoring a young opening batsman and says, 'This is what I recommend that you do or try,' he is not mentoring, he is advising. When he tells someone what to do, he is instructing. So a mentor can do all of those things.

In the modern day when people talk about empowering players and saying, 'Well you figure it out and do what you need to do', that's abdicating.

Coaching is a process where I help you find your own best answer for yourself through a process of questioning, testing your thinking, maybe giving you information and asking how you make sense of it. I'm probing, questioning, engaging, giving feedback for you to make your own best decision for yourself.

So I coach. Whereas most coaches today are actually instructors. They tell people what to do, when to practice, when to bat, for how long, where to bowl, etc.

You no longer have batting or bowling coaches at the Delhi Daredevils. So how does your role work?

The knowledge of how to play T20 cricket at the highest levels in the world, at the moment, sits in the playing group. Very few current coaches have played T20 cricket for any length of time at the highest level. What I do is harness the collective intelligence of the playing group, to work out how best to train, how best to have meetings, play games, what is Plan A, B and C. So I use player knowledge, and I facilitate the knowledge landing on the table, and facilitate good conversations. Strategy comes out of the playing group.

As soon as there is a coach in place telling players what to do, it stops players having to think. For a lot of players that's quite alluring because you don't have to do the thinking, and if something goes wrong you have someone else to blame. I believe most games are won and lost in key moments. You get some games that are tearaway wins or tearaway losses where someone blows it out of the water, but most are relatively close-fought with a couple of key moments where it goes one way or the other. For me it's the quality of thinking in those moments that sets you up to fall on the right side. So, I want players who are able to understand what's going on, understand Plan A, B and C because they have been part of the thinking that's gone into why we are doing what we are at that point in time. I don't have to send gloves on to a field because the thinking is already in the playing group.

Does that make it quite important to recruit players with knowledge to share with the group, given that in the IPL you are going to have a lot of young players?

If I've got 10 young players in my team, it means there are 10 young players in another team and of those, at least four are going to be playing against us. They are too young and inexperienced for there to do stats and video analytics, so who knows best about the four young players in the Mumbai team when we play against them? The young guys in our team. So they are as important, because they bring knowledge of those opposing players that I can't bring, Rahul Dravid can't bring, a Shane Watson can't bring and our video analyst can't bring. Everyone has a place where they have value to add. In any T20 team around the world there is enough knowledge to cover almost any topic. If there is some piece of information we don't have in the group, I'm 100 per cent certain that somebody in the group knows where we can get it.

But do you only look at players with something to share, or will you also recruit players who are supremely talented but might not be able to contribute as much?

I can't have all 15 people talking. So there's always enough knowledge, and enough space for the guys who don't know or don't want to have an opinion. What I look for is talented players - and there's quite a detailed process of how we identify someone, we don't just look at numbers - and the other key piece is the kind of character they are. They need to be a good bloke who is going to add to the team plan or the team bank, as opposed to take away from it. That's as important as good numbers.

If you're tapping into such an extensive knowledge base, does that mean you have long team meetings?

I will ask the players in that room what works in terms of team meetings in their experience and what doesn't work. So even for meetings I will get the players' inputs on the best way to go about them. In the last two T20 tournaments I've done (the BBL and the PSL) I had the same assistant coach, and he commented that the team meeting and preparation in each was fundamentally different. We had a different captain and senior players, and I will do what meets the team's needs that is also lined up to where we're going. The key is we're there to win it - that underpins everything. But then it is 'what is the best way to hold meetings - do we meet in the hotel, or go to the ground early and meet in the change room?' I get players to come up with what they believe is honestly best for that group of players, so they know it is their team and we co-create the team, as opposed to most teams where the coach arrives with what he believes is the best idea.

There are three ways I can build a campaign: I can build it 'my way' with my experience and knowledge; the 'right way', which is go and find out what the experts of the day are doing and copy it; or the best way, which is to put 'my way' and the 'right way' aside but remain informed by it, and have a conversation with the players. 'Okay guys, we're here to win. Do we want to have an unbelievable experience while we're here on this journey, so even if we don't win, we turn around and say flip that was an incredible campaign?' And if we want it to be incredible, what do we need to do? And then we design it.

With team meetings, there is so much you can analyse and talk about for a game. You might need to analyse as many as 15 opponents, so to do so in a team meeting might make it a bit long and tedious...

So the ideal that we're moving towards is that each individual goes and sits with an analyst and gets what he needs. An opening batsman only needs to understand a handful of bowlers. Each bowler needs to understand where he's bowling. So if he's bowling two up front and two at the death, he needs to understand batters 1-3 and the power hitters. I will sit with the player and the analyst and ask, 'What is it that you want that will leave you prepared?'

Then when we sit in the team meeting, we won't go and analyse everyone - that's already done on an individual basis. But I'll put the probable opposition on the board, and say to the batsmen, 'Is there anyone there who anyone in this forum would like to ask a question about?' An Australian might say, 'Does anyone know this young Indian spinner?' Whoever knows him will give some brief inputs. The same with the bowlers.

"When Rahul was captain of the Rajasthan Royals, he asked the owners to interview me, and I came on board. When he moved to Delhi, we went together. It's a partnership."

Will you do any active coaching in terms of working with a bowler's action or a batsman's stance, for example?

I've asked a huge number of players this question: 'When it comes to technical inputs around your game, how many pieces of advice do you think you've received that were helpful?' Players who have had an extended career will say anywhere between one and three out of 100 things that they have been told by an expert actually makes a point. So I know that if I give a player a piece of input, there is a 99 per cent chance it is going to be useless. I'm very cognisant of that.

If I recognise something in a player, I'll go and get a video of them when they were doing well, and a video of them now, and I'll look at it with an analyst or someone who understands batting or bowling, and we'll see if we recognise a difference. Nineteen out of 20 times if we can see a difference, I'll go to the player and say, 'Listen I've got some video footage, do you want to have a look at it?' If they don't it's fine, although generally they always say yes. Then they'll look at the video and self-assess.

If a player is battling with something, I'll ask who the one or two people within the team are that they would like to pull in to have a talk about that aspect of their game? So I will always include their peers if they wish. For example, (at) Sydney Thunder two years ago, Shane Watson had been dropped from the Australia side in all three formats. Jacques Kallis came to me and said, 'Paddy, I've been playing with and against Watto for a number of years, and there's something I've been noticing about his preparation in his stance.' I said, 'Stop right there, are you happy to talk to Shane about it?' He was, so I called Shane and told him, 'Jakes has an observation, are you interested?' His response was that absolutely he was. Three games later Shane was picked for the World Twenty20. I think since that conversation, Shane Watson, who had previously been out lbw more than half the time... I don't know that he's been lbw three times in two years. So I really do believe in the value of peer coaching.

The other option is if, say, Quinton de Kock has a technical problem, I'm only with him for six weeks so I will rather ask him who his go-to person is around his batting. Then we'll see if we can connect them somehow. Everyone has a go-to person. I don't assume that's going to be me. But if someone wants me to give my input, I will offer it.

©BCCI

You and Rahul have worked quite a lot together. Is that because of how you enjoy operating together? And how do you draw on analysts?

When I was with India and Rahul was still playing, we used to speak about everything under the sun, and often we would talk more about life than about cricket. Then when he was captain of the Rajasthan Royals, he asked the owners to interview me, and I came on board. When he moved to Delhi, we went together. It's a partnership.

Between myself, Rahul and Zubin (Bharucha), who I call a 'stratistician', we cover all bases because we use that player-take-responsibility, player-coaching model. For most short-format teams, there are enough experts within the environment that you don't need people (like batting and bowling coaches) telling the players what to do, and it's too short to be changing anything technically. If you've got another coach then often you have people who think they need to justify their position.

The analysts who worked with Rahul and I at the Rajasthan Royals, I would say they are the best in the game by a distance. Fortunately they have come across with us to the Delhi Daredevils. I tap into that knowledge base even when I go across to other leagues. I don't necessarily bring the knowledge, but I bring the people who have access to it. For me, to find out a piece of information on any cricketer in the world is now one phone call away. So often it's better to pick up a phone than look up a stats sheet. That's what's happened in the T20 game - it's brought everyone closer. Having worked around the traps and built good relationships with players, I can pick up that phone and ask the question.

Does that knowledge that the analysts gather relate to stats?

Ways to look at stats.

What sort of things are they collecting and analysing?

It's looking at the obvious stuff, but often it's obvious stuff that people don't do. Right-arm spin over the wicket or round the wicket. Left-arm seam round and over. There are a lot of people who don't even look at that level of detail. If it is stats, is it in comparison to conditions and the overall total scores? A batsman in Kolkata [Knight Riders] will always have a lower strike rate than a batsman whose home ground is Bangalore. It's understanding all of that.

When it comes to recruiting players with knowledge and experience, is that where someone like Zaheer Khan comes in?

There will be times when you don't have a lot of good cricket brains. That happens, and it happened to me in a previous tournament. But most of the time you do. Last year watching Zaheer captain, he is an exceptionally smart operator as a bowler. He really understands bowling and batsmen and fields and strategy, and he was able to translate that into captaining - particularly captaining a bowling unit in the field. There was X-factor in the way that he did some really weird and strange things that quite often proved to be a stroke of genius. So he brings that cricket brain that he has as a bowler. If you bowl at his pace with that body at that age, you have to be very clever and skilled, and he brings that to his leadership.

With his body a year older, will there be any risk in including him in the XI again?

There always is risk in including an older bowler. He hasn't been playing a lot of cricket, but I believe he has been getting himself into good nick. It's only four overs of bowling, so it's more the sprinting around the boundary and the fielding that is a danger.

This will be your sixth IPL as a head coach. Are you getting a better idea of what the key ingredients are for winning the tournament?

You need a very balanced playing XI, and one of the things that really helps that is the all-rounders that you have. They are gold. You need power at the top of the order, and two lots of power in the middle order. You need the ball spinning both ways. So number one is assembling your playing XI. Then the back-up you have for those options is critical.

Once you've got the skill, it's about making the smartest use of that skill and really harnessing the skill, knowledge and intelligence of the group. Creating a great environment where players start to feel like it's their home team, so you create some loyalty, as opposed to just being there as a hired hand. That really does count, especially towards the back end of the competition. The other thing is managing energy levels, because it's busy, it's long, there's a lot of travel and it can get tiring. It fits within the context of a busy year for a lot of players. So ideally our vision is to be mentally, emotionally and physically have more in the tank towards the end of the campaign than the other teams through managing individuals and the environment. I'm figuring out how to do that.

Is that why you rotated so much last season?

The rotation was more about man-matching. It's a really interesting debate: whether you get your playing XI and you leave them in their roles and let them continue in it so they get clearer and clearer in playing that role, versus coming up with man-matching for conditions and man-matching players. So if it's a turning wicket, you play batsmen who are better at playing spin and shuffle the batting around to have more power up front. If the opposition have really good legspin, do you need to make sure you have left- and right-hand combination all the way through the middle, or have three left-handers out of seven or eight batsmen? It's about finding the combination of leaving someone to settle, and chopping and changing to smartly man-match without disrupting too many individuals. Last year was a man-matching strategy.

Will you continue with it this season?

Rahul and I will continue the robust debate around which is the best way to do it, and we'll try and figure it. Again, you need to have the squad to be able to do it.

You spoke about the winning ingredients. Are those constantly evolving in these tournaments?

Yes. There are some things that I mentioned which are really key. The key is to constantly learn and evolve. That gives you the best chance of success. The other factor that is really important to know, is that in the IPL you have four foreign players who are meant to be guns, and you've got two to three Indian players who are also guns. The team whose guns fire the most, wins. So while we can do all of this strategy and tactics and setting up environments, that contributes and goes a long way to getting across the line in those 50-50 games, but big guns firing, there is no better success ingredient.

"As soon as there is a coach in place telling players what to do, it stops players having to think."

Last season JP Duminy was your only batsman over the age of 25. Will the fact that the others are a year older and more experienced now give you a boost?

One of the things that Rahul and particularly Zubin are very good at is identifying young talent. In a tournament like the IPL, having young players who are hungry is one way of looking at it, and the other is to take really expensive players, but are they that hungry and up for it? Is there longevity in terms of the view to have them in the team for three years? Is there a better chance of them being tired or injured? From the Rajasthan Royals days, we've always gone the route of signing young players.

If you look at those under-25 players that were in the Delhi team last year, what they have accomplished since then - Rishabh Pant has come through into the national team, Shreyas Iyer has been given awards, Karun Nair has scored that triple century (in Test cricket). There are three players who have made significant contributions at an international level for where they are at. That shows that those three young pickings were smart selections because they've already gone on. So yes, they will be better players and we are fairly confident that they are good investments in the future. I like to think that the environment that we create gives them an opportunity to grow, rather than get caught under the shadows of superstars.

© Cricbuzz

TAGS

RELATED STORIES