Monty Desai, until recently the coach of USA South East region, completed a stint with Rajasthan Royals in South Africa as part of its elite coaching squad. His next assignment is in England as Rajasthan gets ready to play against Middlesex. DreamCricket.com caught up with him in Mumbai as he was taking a break after IPL 2.

Monty Desai - From coaching USA's South East region to coaching Rajasthan Royals

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Monty Desai, who until recently coached USA's South East region, completed a stint with Rajasthan Royals in South Africa as part of its elite coaching squad. His next assignment is in England as Rajasthan gets ready to play against Middlesex. DreamCricket.com caught up with him in Mumbai as he was taking a break after IPL 2.

DreamCricket: Congratulations Monty on completing your first season with Rajasthan Royals. Can you share with our readers how a coach from Atlanta ended up on the coaching staff of the prestigious Rajasthan Royals?

Monty: Thanks Venu. Like many who are passionate about this game, I started this journey with a dream to become a cricketer and soon realized that my fate was to become a cricket coach. I have been in this field for the last 12 years, where I have coached with World Cricket Academy since its founding under the guidance of late Shri Hanumant Singh. I came to Atlanta mainly for family reasons.

Initially, it seemed my coaching life was not going to be possible in Atlanta, but here too I started coaching the regional team, thanks to AGCC management for keeping faith in me. I was also able to set up a coaching clinic for kids in Atlanta with support from a long list of well-wishers from Atlanta.

Earlier this year, when we met in New Jersey, I was on my way to Mumbai and I was still not sure what was in store for me in India although I knew that with IPL, there would be plenty of opportunities.

My name to Rajasthan Royals was suggested by my close friends Zubin Barucha and Andy Flower and I am grateful to both of them for believing in me.

My experience in development work and probably my philosophy about 'mind and man management' impressed the Rajasthan Royals management in my interview and I was taken on board.

DreamCricket: IPL is just once-a-year, so what did you do before the start of the season?

Monty: Rajasthan Royals is involved with a bit of talent scouting and we also hold a few workshops through out the season in India. We also set up the Professional Development Camp in February, where I was involved with some serious work trying to identify fresh talent ready for IPL. Best part about Rajasthan Royals is that they are willing to throw fresh talent in such a high profile tournament.

DreamCricket: But many of these players were sent back?

Monty: All of them knew when we came to South Africa that the team will be short listed to 20 players after the conditioning camp in CapeTown. It was decision time and we had to take some tough decisions in South Africa where we had to short list our team. Some teams like Kolkata had to trim down even further.

This was tough, no doubt. I always believe in the phrase "there are no rehearsals in real life only performances," in the team's interest, sometimes you have face tough decisions as it comes. We had given enough opportunities to everyone to show their skills in the warm up matches before the start of the IPL. Some like Kamran Khan stayed back and made it to the team, purely through their exceptional performances through out the trials games, development camp and warm-up matches.


DreamCricket: How did the development work translate to a coaching role?

Monty: To begin with, I was mainly appointed to work on the development squad, at the same time I had few interactions with Darren Berry personally and on emails to execute the team plans as explained by him. By April, I was finally on board as a Coach on the Development Squad with the first official full fledged tour IPL'09 for Rajasthan Royals. All I can say I was lucky to be working with a very friendly coaching team - Shane Warne, Darren Berry and Jeremy Snape. They were all very open and receptive to suggestions and that helps as you feel that you are welcomed as a part of the team. It was their decision to keep me on for the whole tour so I continued giving my inputs and more importantly learn from them.

DreamCricket: Tell me about the coaching staff. Normally, you see a physio and a coach, perhaps an assistant coach. Rajasthan coaching department had Darren Berry (Director of Coaching), Jeremy Snape (High Performance coach), John Gloster (Physio), yourself and Satish Samant as coaches. What was the role of each of of you?

Monty: Everybody had a role - John is our Doctor, he along with his medical team were brilliant and thoroughly professional in taking care of each and every player's fitness. Sometimes they had to work long hours to treat injuries. John is very creative in our warm ups and cool downs during practice sessions and matches. Recovery sessions in cold swimming pools were awesome - lots of fun.

Jeremy Snapes does lots of one-on-one work where he involved me and Satish Samant as well. The aim was to keep players' confidence high. Sometimes we all had long hrs at the nets as all our batsmen were desperate to perform in the matches. He is the best at what he does, his 3 seconds chill theory works for most of the players around the world. Satish and I just added Indian expertise to it, specially for overseas batsmen batting against spin.

Darren Berry likes to plan all the sessions well ahead and he personally works a lot with wicket keepers. Darren is very passionate and always busy thinking about strategies and discussing the same with Warnie. He believes in lot of team building activities and he cares for each and everyone associated with this team.

I personally like to observe a lot before making any judgments on technical aspects, so when I worked on one-to-one it was all about keeping it super simple. I always wanted to see if the players were willing to push themselves out of their comfort zone. If not, then I would slowly try to push them sometimes by being vocal but most of the times by being quiet and patient. My coach Shri Hanumant Singh used to always say "Try to read their mind and then try to convince them".

Between Darren, Jeremy, myself and Satish we shared the coaching work load like fielding sessions, net sessions etc. It was a blend of Australian, English and Indian coaching concepts and theories.

Finally Shane Warne executed lot of these plans and frequently produced his magic on the field.

DreamCricket: Rajasthan's campaign started off badly with a huge loss and then a rain affected match. But after that, it was not too bad - considering you did not have the services of the 2008 Purple Cap winner Sohail Tanvir and 2008 Man of the Series Shane Watson.

Monty: Even after the tournament started with so many distractions, we kept saying to all our players to stay on course, unfortunately I don't think each and everyone of us committed to it 100%. If we had done that we would have won it again because the team that comes together fastest wins the championship and we just couldn't do it fast enough this year. We kept saying to all the players and ourselves to either find a way or make one! So it was not the absence of Sohail Tanvir or Shane Watson alone that mattered.

DreamCricket: From a coaching and development perspective, the absence of these two bowlers meant that you could try your new finds - Kamran Khan and Amit Singh. That brings back to what you said earlier, that Rajasthan Royals is willing to try its new talent - a very fair operation.

Monty: Yes very fair and they stand by our decisions. Abhishek Raut who won us one game against Deccan Chargers is another such name that we can boast of. Of course, we wanted him to be more consistent but to be fair he had no experience at this level. We missed out Dinesh Salunke this year because of his injuries and he will be strong contender next year. Don't be surprised if there are few more new names next year as Rajasthan Royals is very different from other franchises for sure. We are also thinking of talent scouting programs in USA.

DreamCricket: We should talk about your USA programs soon. Of course, despite the absence of many players, the team still had some solid victories. A lot of the outcomes were dependent on Graeme Smith, Yusuf Pathan and Warnie himself. What else stood out for you? What were the highlights from IPL 2?

Monty: True. Though we didn't display good consistent performances, my biggest highlight was definitely our win against Mumbai Indians. Munaf bowled his skin out. The super over win against KKR was huge as well, I am sure everyone enjoyed Yusuf's big hits but lets not forget Kamran's efforts as well. All I can say we have shown lot of character in pressure games this year. Sweat, blood and tears are the ingredients of our team, we will come back strong next year.

DreamCricket: What did you learn from the experience?

Monty: I must say this was one of the most important , challenging and a wonderful experience of my cricketing career. I personally faced the challenge of getting together with the different cultures and moods which a common dressing room carries. Just imagine when you are the most crucial link between the overseas players, Indian players and the foriegn coaching team, with one of the greatest ever performer Shane Warne as your captain/coach, the challenge is bigger than one could imagine.

At the end of the tournament I am happy that my inputs were appreciated by Shane and Darren and I am hoping for further involvement to create something special for next year.

Of course all this wouldn't have been possible without the support of Manoj Badale and the management team of Rajasthan Royals who trusted in my abilities.

DreamCricket: What's in store for you next? Are you going to return to Atlanta to coach here?

Monty: I am heading off to England, we have a one off match against Middlesex in July. Maybe I will return after that to Atlanta. I am emotionally attached to that city as my parents still live there. The biggest thank you goes to my parents and my wife who have supported me right from the start. They have sacrificed a lot for me and I owe them all a lot.

DreamCricket: How do you rate the IPL itself? The move to South Africa?

Monty: Overall IPL was a huge success in South Africa and hats off to Lalit Modi who officially has a staff of only 4 people and yet could manage an impossible. He is proof that "Impossible is Nothing."

DreamCricket: Thank you Monty. We hope that you will stop by and visit our DreamCricket Academy on your next trip. Our boys will surely be eager to meet you and get some tips.