How a 31-year-old coach, Anant Tambvekar, has helped Smriti Mandhana become the world’s best batter

In 2017, Smriti Mandhana was struggling at the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore, racing to recover from ACL surgery and be fit for the ICC World Cup.

Every weekend, her personal coach Anant Tambvekar would go down there and help her train when she was not practicing at NCA. The Sangli cricketer who first helped her hone her crisp footwork was instrumental is getting her back on her feet.

The rest her – incredible recovery and match-winning knocks in the first two matches of the 2017 ICC World Cup – is, well, history. She made it a point to thank him in her Player-of-the-Match acceptance speech in England and in the months then, has him as a coach at her SM18 Cricket Academy.

“Before the World Cup we would practice but nobody would really recognise or consider us. But after the good performance, people have started watching us... what we do and what we need and seeing what are our requirements during practice. Initially we used to have only five to ten balls, now we have an entire bucket full of balls to practice,” Tambvekar told Scroll.in.

With her clean hitting, perfect timing, back-foot play and the graceful arc of her bat, Mandhana, the ICC Player of the Year in 2018 and currently the world No 1 batter, has become one of the best cricketers of this generation.

According to Tambvekar, a large part of the easy-on-the-eye technique stems from her natural touch but a crucial part of Mandhana’s success is down to a seemingly ordinary beginning; one which saw her do good, old-fashioned hard work overseen by a dedicated young cricketer who coached part-time.

Only 31, Tambvekar is a still a professional cricketer himself, playing for Jain Irrigation in the DY Patil tournament in Mumbai. He first met Mandhana about a decade ago when he was the district coach at Sangli and her brother played in the Under-16 team.

“Her father told me that he has a daughter who needed coaching as well. I said I will give it a go. She was an Under-16 player then even though she was very young [Smriti made it to the Maharashtra U-16 team as a 11-year-old]. Initially she had no idea how to play all the shots but she hit the ball really well even she was small. That is why Maharashtra selected her when she was very young,” he added.

The youngster honed her craft with endless hours of practice under the discerning eye of Tambvekar. First, at a college ground and then on a turf made by her family, she played in simulated conditions, against older boys and with her brother’s used match balls to improve her technique.

“Generally, I didn’t need a lot of changes because her natural game was strong and aggressive. All I had to do was make her basics strong, everything else was a natural touch. She can hit the ball really well, you must have seen that during the ODIs against New Zealand also,” her first coach said.

Tambvekar added: “Sangli is not a big city, we didn’t have the kind of facilities a young cricketer needed when I used to play. I always thought that if someone came to me I will make sure they get the facilities needed, the kind I saw all over at the professional level. So I used to make her practice at that standard. Her brother and father backed her fully as well. He used to pass on old balls to us, the ones from his five-wicket haul, so that she could practice.”

In the last 18 months, Mandhana’s stock has risen to new heights – Player of the Series in the KIA Super League in England, centuries in the SENA (South Africa, England, New Zealand, Australia) countries and the crowning glory of the the Rachael Heyhoe Flint medal.

But long before she was scoring freely in away games, Tambvekar simulated conditions back home to help the opener adapt to bounce and swing.

“I have played in UK for three years as well so I had some idea about how the ball swings over there. We don’t get those conditions in India, so we used to train early morning like 6 AM when the weather was cold and the winds would blow. We used to tape the plastic ball to get used to the swing. Similarly, for the bounce in Australia, we used to wet the tennis ball and send it down from 18 yards. That’s how we practiced and we spent a lot of time working on this,” he explained.

A lot has changed for the Sangli cricketers in the last 18 months. As the popularity of women’s cricket grew, the support did as well. There were more matches, more camps, more training for the players.

“Earlier, we used to practice for eight hours a day earlier, which included everything from net practice to gym, and fitness work. Now, since she came back from the World Cup, she has mostly been training away. Before that she used to be here for two to three months when there were long gaps and we trained together. Now, she is hardly here for 10-15 days but practises whenever she can,” he said.

One of the things she wants to do is play longer innings with more consistency. It is an aspect of her game that she has often spoken about changing.

“It has also happened with Virender Sehwag, he also used to score runs very quickly. I asked her to stay there as long as you can, it will help you a lot. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t. Cricket is all about concentration,” he said.

The 31-year-old coach has played district level, the Times Shield in Mumbai and been part of Rajasthan Royals for a year but that didn’t go further because his performances weren’t up to the mark. But his limited cricket exposure was more than enough to help mentor Mandhana to greater heights. Even now, he helps her improve her game and the more open stance she has adopted in the last few months is testament to the working relationship they share.

From Sangli to the top of the ICC Rankings, from mastering swing through taped balls to scoring centuries in England, Mandhana’s cricketing graph has shown an upward trend thanks largely to the small things started by her coach Tambvekar a decade ago. And clearly, they still have a lot more left in the tank.