Sustained brilliance will be the key against South Africa: Ravi Shastri

On the back of a historic Test series win in Sri Lanka, India get ready to face South Africa later this month in a grueling 72-day long tour for the visitors. BCCI announced recently that the advisory committee comprising Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman, gave the nod to Ravi Shastri and the existing team of coaches, who will continue to hold fort for this series and beyond, till the Twenty20 World Cup next year.

“South Africa are the No. 1 team in the world. We have to play consistent cricket for long periods of time to put them under pressure. That will be the endeavour,” said Team Director Ravi Shastri, who said this role has been the biggest challenge for him in his entire time in the sport.

“Our style of play will not change. If you reflect on our performances in Australia and Sri Lanka, you will see that consistency was the difference between defeat and victory. Sustained brilliance will be the key against the Proteas," Shastri told BCCI.tv in an interview .

In Australia and even in the recent series victory in Sri Lanka, India showed a tendency to let an advantageous position slip – be it a batting collapse while chasing a target or letting the opposition tail wag. That is something Shastri said the team needs to focus on.

“Not letting the opposition off the hook after having them under pressure demands a lot of patience. We weren’t patient enough both in Australia and during the first Test in Sri Lanka. Once the patience and discipline came, in the next two Tests, we saw the results,” Shastri said.

“The process started in Australia, continued in Bangladesh and carried on to Sri Lanka, as far as Test matches are concerned,” he added.

Shastri reserved special praise for the likes of Ravichandran Ashwin – the man with the ‘astronaut-mind’ and Ishant Sharma – who ‘bowled like a million dollars in Sri Lanka.’

Calling Ashwin the best off-spinner in the world right now, Shastri said, “We know he has got the brain of an astronaut. He has combined that intelligence with calmness and patience now. That bodes well for us because now the astronaut’s mind is helping Team India take flight.”

And if there was any doubt about how the team management will handle Ishant’s much-discussed aggression, Shastri made it clear that there is no reason for Ishant to change his style.

“He will learn where to draw a line. But let me assure you, he has the backing of the entire team. I want him to be aggressive and I will be the first one to push him in that direction. But I will also mark the line,” said Shastri.

Shastri also praised the flexibility shown by Indian batsmen in the Test series against Sri Lanka where the batting order was constantly changed. Attributing the state of flux to the injuries the squad had to endure, Shastri was delighted with the willingness of the players to step up.

“Even when everyone is fit, we will be flexible in deciding our batting order based on the conditions and the opposition. There are no hard and fast rules here. The good thing is that we have a captain who is prepared to lead from the front in all these areas. He is the kind of guy who will go and open the batting if the situation arises," Shastri said.

“These guys don’t think, ‘What if’? They say, ‘Why not’?”

Shastri – along with Sanjay Bangar (batting coach), Bharat Arun (bowling coach) and R Sridhar (fielding coach) – were appointed during India’s disastrous Test series against England in 2014. As the contracts of the entire team has been renewed till the next World Cup, Shastri was full of praise for the “honest effort” put in by all of them, who have come through the system – bucking the trend of having foreign coaches.

“Someone like Bharat Arun, people would not have known. When he was first brought into the team, people would have asked, ‘Who’ and ‘Why’? Now they will stop on their track and say, ‘Why not earlier’? The same applies for Sridhar and Sanjay. The reason is that these guys have been through the grind. They have been involved in the system for many, many years,” said Shastri.

Read Ravi Shastri’s full interview with BCCI.tv here.