Shane Warne struggling to have an impact as a coach on the Rajasthan Royals

By Gaurav Joshi

Halfway through the IPL, the Royals are floating in the middle of the table. They have lost more games than they have won.   While Warne’s wise words of wisdom might be an inspiration to the players, the men that take the field seem to be repeating the same mistakes or running short of ideas.

Over his career, Warne had the tendency to lift for the deciding moments, now he has to try rejuvenating his players as a coach. Players in the Royals camp describe Warne as a true competitor and his words give them the inspiration of winning from any situation.   To sum it up, he is a great a motivator.

Man management is an important side of coaching and Warne was pivotal in turning Shane Watson’s career in 2008 at the Royals, but during that time he still had a role to play with the ball, now it is only with words.   As Michael Clarke stated nobody reads the game better than Warne, but reading it as an individual or a captain and making a decision on the field is different to a T20 mentor that needs to devise strategies by looking through data and patterns over the past few seasons.

This is not to say Warne does not study any data or predictions, but so shrewd and confident was he in his mind that despite a statistic revealing a trend, Warne as a bowler was prepared to go against the odds and still come at the top. But not everyone in the Royals teams is Warne most of them are still mastering their art and trying to fight their inner demons.

The T20 game is more about the analysis than Tests.   Warne and the Royals need to have specific game plans against specific oppositions. From the evidence of this season it is looking more and more like they are not prepared to deviate from a template that has been drawn on the whiteboard in the change rooms. Warne’s philosophy is to back those strategies, but there comes a time that plans need to be tinkered and new plans need to be devised.

While Warne might be a legend at conjuring and adapting new plans within a few balls, his team needs a bit of time to understand and implement. He will get another opportunity in the next couple of days.   It will be intriguing to see what Warne can come up with.

As the mantra goes in all sports great players rarely become great coaches.

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