Roy Dias’ Interview on ACC’s Site

This time we feature here the interview of Roy Dias while Nepal was touring Malaysia published in the Asian Cricket Council’s official site.

Nepalis players call him ‘The Godfather’. Former Sri Lankan batting great Roy Dias, currently coach of Nepal, speaks candidly about the challenges facing him and his team.

I was asked by a BBC journalist after Nepal won the U-19 ACC Trophy in Kathmandu (his first tournament in charge of the team) ‘how do they even play cricket in Nepal, aren’t there hills everywhere?’

“A fair question because we have many hills, but there is one decent ground and all those who want to play cricket come there. Whatever surface they play on, these players have talent.”

Three years later, eight of that original team are still with him and have built on their skills. Watching them practice, one can see that there’s terrific team spirit amongst them. They are genuinely all comfortable with each other – while being rather fearful of their coach!

Typically wiry, Nepalese are more likely to be spinners than fast bowlers. “They’re naturally athletic, though I think that if we could widen our catchment area, take hold of those boys who think nothing of going up and down mountains for miles to get their milk, then Nepal cricket would be even stronger. For example, the Sri Lankan national team made some major improvement once they started recruiting from the outstations. That’s where they find the fast bowlers. They don’t need gym or strength work. It’s al natural.”

Nepal has achieved considerable success in all their age-group representative matches since Roy Dias took over as national coach, with the U-15, U-17, and U-19 teams playing some stirring cricket. In the U-19 World Cup in New Zealand they lost a close game to an England side full of county cricketers and then beat Pakistan in the tournament’s most thrilling upset.

That match set a pattern that has been repeated a number of times: they seem to beat Bangladesh whenever they play them and have even beaten New Zealand when defending a score of 123, they bowled them out for 107. Most recently in the match between Malaysia and Nepal at the 2004 ACC Trophy, they took the last 8 Malaysian wickets for just 51 runs to win by 25 runs

There are so many teams with talent, so many talented former internationals coaching them – Sandeep Patil of Oman, Abid Ali the UAE, Robin Singh of Hong Kong, Ruwan Kalpage of the Maldives. Kiran More of Bhutan, Nayan Mongia of Thailand. What distinguishes Nepal is that never give up and keep fighting with a passion to the very end. Gurkha spirit, underdog spirit, call it what you will. While other teams in the region may find it hard to summon the necessary desire and self-belief for whatever reason, to a man, the Nepalese cricketers have what it takes.

Television – ESPN/STAR Sports/Doordarshan – has undoubtedly played a major part in popularizing the game in Nepal, and players can see the rewards that success can bring. Even at the semi-professional level of the game in Nepal, a player can make a decent living from cricket and that too is an important factor in the player’s ambitions to cement his place in the squad.

Currently Nepal have a squad of around 30 players. They say the harder you work, the luckier you get, and Roy Dias is lucky. “Nepal’s players have a motivation to train hard. “Results count a lot,” says Mr. Dias. “Others before me (Bobby Simpson, Rumesh Ratnayake) must have done a lot, but the results after me have been very good. I’ve known eight of them from the very start who are still with me, there’s a coaching familiarity. I like to think I bring out the best in them, they certainly bring out the best in me. They’ve made me tougher because I have to do everything. I have had to learn about all aspects of the game. I was soft. I became hard. You have to get the best out of them. Coaching is all about communication, being with them for so long makes it easier.”

Mr. Dias was formerly the coach of the Sri Lankan national team and the experience one senses, taught him a lot about man-management. “A coach has to understand that some players who for all their talent may have technical faults need to be told things in such a way that they don’t get nervous.” Paranoia and insecurity are rife in this game, depend as it does on cerebral factors. And players, even the very best, have public weaknesses, and private ones. But all are initially reluctant to change the method that brought them into international cricket, however flawed they might be. “It’s not that they cannot understand the coaching, it is that they cannot understand the way you are telling them. Every player is different. Some need to be treated with delicacy, others need to be shouted at. But a coach must spend a long enough time with a player to know what will work for him.”

Yet at a certain level, up against the teams of the Middle East, Nepal are unable to compete. The Middle East countries, who dominated the 2004 ACC Trophy for example, and look most likely to reach Champions Trophies and World Cups have expatriate players steeped in competitive cricket culture. Nepal have but two tournaments a year internally, and must contend with a long rainy season, short days and Himalayan winters. And those mountains and hills.

The qualification rule makes it difficult for us and teams like Thailand and the Maldives for example, to compete with teams at senior level. The changing of those rules would suit us, but more than that we need an indoor school. Getting the players year-long, out of the cold and rain, getting them in the evenings would make a lot of difference. We are usually one of the best fielding sides given but you could see it in our match against Singapore last week, the players were a little slow in the field just because they hadn’t had a chance to practice.

Can the ACC do any more than they are doing for its members already? “The ACC are undoubtedly doing a lot of good. But if they want us to play at an even better level, facilities like indoor schools are a priority”, says Mr. Dias.

When does he think is the ideal time to capture a young cricketer – “I would say that 8 years is a good age to for the basics, the ABC of cricket I would have them learn for two years. You have to get them to hit the ball, just to hold a bat in the natural way for them alone. I would tell them not to copy any one else, especially the ones on TV!”

“If I want to communicate one thing to a batsman, it is this”, says Mr. Dias, “a player can survive with a good technique. Runs may come slowly but he will have survived. I want them to play proper cricket. So many of them tell me they want to hit a six like on television but I do a simple calculation with them. The difference between 6 and 4 is only 2 runs, but the risk level is much more. They can’t get caught if they keep it on the ground.” He himself, rarely hit a six, though there was one glorious apart flicked six to leg in the 1987 World Cup off England’s Phil de Freitas which was arguably the shot of the tournament. And should any player ever doubt the Dias principles, it would do well to remember that even Don Bradman only hit thirteen sixes in his whole Test career. The majority of them after he’d passed 100.

Although football is the national sport, such has been Nepal’s success in cricket in recent years that the national side’s results are highlighted in the sports pages, the players have minor celebrity and on this current tour of South-East Asia the team even have a full-time representative of the national press travelling with them.

Is there any one thing he’s most proud of achieving with the team? “I have so many youngsters who I am proud of that is unfair to single out any one of them. It is a team game and they win and lose together. But I do tell them this, something which my old coach told me: when you have the knife in someone, that is the time to turn the handle.” Roy Dias, advising on assassination?! “No, what my coach meant was that when you’ve scored a hundred, that’s the time to think about getting two hundred. Cricket is a game where you can’t relax your determination for one moment.”