India's bowling coach Dawes needs to look beyond mannequins

India’s bowling coach Joe Dawes has been under-fire for quite sometime as his ‘out of the box’ coaching methods are simply not working. Some of India’s best bowlers have lost their mojo, others have succumbed to injury and still more like R Ashwin keep experimenting with their form. For the tour of South Africa, skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni sent an SOS to senior pro Zaheer Khan. Dhoni wanted the left-armer to become part of the team as quickly as possible so that he can help mentor the younger pacemen during the ODIs – all this while Dawes is part of the unit. Even in Bangladesh, the bowling unit seems to have simply rejected Dawes’ latest experiment – the seven-foot tall mannequin. In the run-up to the first warm-up game against Sri Lanka, the mannequin that was positioned on one of the centre strips cut a lonely figure as the fast bowlers didn’t quite make a beeline for it. [caption id=“attachment_1438805” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Bowling coach Joe Dawes needs to pull up his socks. Reuters[/caption] The red and black coloured mannequin, which resembles Ajay Jadeja’s stance with a slight backlift when the bowler is in delivery stride, is supposed to help bowlers practice on their own. It can also help them target specific areas on the wicket, practice bouncer and yorkers. But there is one big drawback – the mannequin – made with soft rubber imported from Australia – doesn’t move. Former India skipper Dilip Vengsarkar believes that the coach needs to set things right but isn’t quite sure Dawes in the right man for the job. “The bowling coach of India can play a very big role in improving the bowler. But I don’t know who the bowling coach is to be honest with you… I have not heard of him,” Vengsarkar, who was also India’s chief selector, sarcastically told Firstpost. In a word, it really tells us about the reputation Dawes has earned in his time with the Indian team. “We don’t really have good spinners in first-class cricket as well… not only international cricket. And of course, we don’t have fast bowlers at all. If you see their performance in India or abroad it has been dismal. And the main reason is that we are playing the same attack across all the formats again and again. So we have to have a good bench strength which is not there at the moment.” “You need to have bowlers who can dismiss the opposition in ODIs/T20 or get 20 wickets in Tests. That is very important. And if you are playing with four bowlers then they have to be able to get 5-10 wickets in a match. Do we have that?” Dawes has not been able to mould India’s young pacemen into world beaters and those flaws have become more evident with every overseas trip. During the coming year, long tours of England and Australia will test India’s pacemen and the bowling coach as well. Will Dawes finally make an impact or will he like the mannequin lie in one corner of the ground — unused and unwanted… With inputs from PTI