We generally try to be very specific at the team meetings: VVS Laxman

Defending champions in IPL Sunrisers Hyderabad has played some terrific brand of cricket in the group stage and will face Kolkata Knight Riders in the eliminator clash today at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore. They needed to win their last couple of game in order to qualify and they did exactly that by defeating Mumbai Indians quite comprehensively.

After getting off to an impressive start in the campaign, SRH stuttered in the middle stages and there was a situation they needed to win at any cost to qualify. Eventually, they finished in the 3rd position exactly like last year and will also face the same opponents Kolkata Knight Riders in the eliminator today. It will be a mouth-watering contest on our hands and it remains to be seen who meets Mumbai Indians in the Qualifier 2 on Friday.

VVS Laxman who is the mentor of the franchise for the last 5 years expressed his view on how the team is managed and how the 4 coaches plan accordingly. During an exclusive interview with Sony Espn, Laxman conceded that the talk with the batting group is pretty simple.

“The communication is very simple – take responsibility, don’t leave it to the next batsman, make sure the number of dot balls is less, and look to put pressure on the bowling always. Look to take singles, rotate the strike, and whenever the opportunity comes, go and play your natural game. You want one of the top three to play till the end. Once that happens, you have a set batsman in the middle and around him the other batsmen can come and express themselves. And that’s been our strength.

Try to have a very consistent communication process irrespective of results

Laxman said irrespective of the results, as a coaching staff they always want to be consistent with the communication. “Win or lose, you have to be very consistent with your communication. So we don’t really talk about the results. We talk about the processes, we talk about the execution of our plans. We will just address that instead of the result, how much we were able to achieve in terms of our game plan, and if at all we didn’t achieve, what was the reason? So it is more of an interaction than actually dictating to the players, and it has been very good. That’s why our environment is very relaxed, because if you are inconsistent with your outcome, or if you are not equanimous with the outcome, then you create a panic within the team environment. We never ever want to do it, we never did that,” Laxman said.

He also added that they try to keep the team meetings as specific as possible. “No, we try to keep team meetings as specific as possible. You are playing the same team twice – it is more about understanding the opposition teams we are going to play, and we do that in the pre-season camp. Once the tournament starts it is very specific and we never have a team meeting for more than 15-20 minutes.