Do stars make good coaches?
BIG NAME ACADEMIES HAVE FALTERED IN UAE AS LOCAL INITIATIVES STAY IN THE RACE
Senior Associate Editor
The news of Rohit Sharma, one of the modern greats of the game, opening his cricket academy in Dubai this September must have made up for the lull in any action in recent months due to the coronavirus pandemic. While the local academies have just begun taking baby steps to familiarise their trainees to the ‘new normal,’ the announcement of an academy named after India’s vice-captain in white ball cricket will surely raise the expectations.
The ‘Cric Kingdom Cricket Academy by Rohit Sharma’ will be the fifth of its kind to roll out from the Singapore-based company Cric Kingdom — who has other set-ups in India, Singapore, Germany and Qatar. Their experience in running the logistics of cricket academies — which is an extremely demanding one — should stand them in good stead and make an exception, feel the organisers.
The unsavoury truth about cricket academies branded after top international stars in the UAE is that almost none of them have been successful so far. Remember the M.S. Dhoni Academy, opened with a great deal of fanfare at the Springdales School or Ravichandran Ashwin’s Gen-Next Academy in the King’s School — both of which had become defunct in the last three years?
In a country of a transitory population, names such as these are lucrative to fuel the dreams but the experiments have not borne fruit for one reason or the other. The last academy to have closed their operations was the Robin Singh Academy, for which the former Indian all-rounder had actually relocated himself to Dubai and set up an impressive facility at the Iranian Club.
Speaking to Gulf News in an interview late last year, Singh said: “I have temporarily closed my academy, but I will be there in 2020. The details of the new location and timings will be disclosed later.” However, things have moved on ever since as Singh was named the Head Coach of UAE national team in January and it will be interesting to see if he can pursue his individual coaching initiatives in the post-Covid era.
A lesson from the past
Former England cricketers Kevin Pietersen, Andrew Flintoff, Sri Lankan great Aravinda de Silva were also among those who had lent their names and announced plans for their academy, but none of the academies linked to these stars could actually play the long innings.
The officials of Rach Sports, who have collaborated with Cric Kingdom to facilitate Rohit Sharma’s initiative here, are aware of the past experiences and want to take a lesson out of them. ‘’It’s a fact that Rohit has promised to make one visit annually here because of his commitments, but we are in the process of building up an extremely experienced panel of coaches including John Wright as the visiting faculty,” said Girban Chakraborty of Rach Sports.
For a small country like the UAE where cricket is predominantly perceived as expat sport, there are approximately around 60 academies — most of which are concentrated in Dubai and Sharjah — but there are only a handful who provide the supply
chain of cricketers to the UAE national teams of different age-groups. The time-tested academies have also flown in celebrity cricketers from time to time to host clinics or workshops, but have shied away from linking their academy’s name to the stars.
The ICC Cricket Academy, located in the premises of International Cricket Council (ICC) headquarters at the Dubai Sports City, is a cut above the rest with their well-equipped indoor training facility, a fielding area, seven pitches of varying characters, cameras and state-of-theart video analysis room.
We are in the process of building up an extremely experienced panel of coaches including John Wright as the visiting faculty.”
Girban Chakraborty » Official of Rach Sports, who have a tie-up with Rohit Sharma’s academy