Believe in fine-tuning team and handing it to captain to make right decisions, attests WV Raman

In the 14 months, Raman has turned the women in blue, who were once the underdogs in the shortest format, to a force to reckon with who ended up as the runners up in the recently concluded T20 World Cup. Shedding light on how he goes around with the girls, Raman shared that he likes to give his input in the build-up to the game and leaves everything to the skipper in the middle which helps the girls enjoy their time in the middle and play their natural game.

"I have always maintained that a coach is a kind of a service engineer of an aircraft. You fine-tune and get the aircraft ready and after that, it is for the captain to handle the aircraft, to take charge on the field. Leading up to the game, I might be active in terms of trying to get my inputs in but closer to the game, I pass the baton on to the captain. Primarily, you need to leave the players alone so that they can flush out whatever little distractions they have to try and get rid of them and get into a better mind-space,” Raman told Cricbuzz.

"More than me being proud, it's a case of the girls gaining the confidence that they can beat anybody on a given day, which is very important. What used to happen earlier was that they would start over-thinking if they felt there was going to be a challenge. That can happen to the most experienced of players, so especially to a bunch of inexperienced cricketers who have their own anxieties, it has to be reinforced further. The other thing I did right through the six and a half weeks was never utter the two words - World Cup. I was only referring to that as 'the tournament'. Because the 'World Cup' bit can get to you, that's something I refrained from using," the former India opener signs off.