Bengal coach Arun Lal said that making his group believe in themselves played a big role in their brilliant run in the ongoing Ranji Trophy. Bengal were back in the final after a long gap of twelve years, beating much-fancied Karnataka in the semi-final.
“The coach is as good as the team,” Lal told ABPLive.
“And I have the best team at the moment in Indian domestic cricket. One is that, when you have such a fabulous bunch of youngsters and experienced players in your team, it makes your job that much easier. I didn’t have to do much, I made them believe in themselves, I tried to identify the areas where they had to improve and we worked really hard on those areas.”
One of the highlights of Bengal’s season has been their bowling attack. Young quick Ishan Porel has been a revelation while Mukesh Kumar and Akash Deep have also made their mark. Spinner Shahbaz Ahmed, a relatively unknown quantity has also starred for the Bengal outfit. The former Indian batsman pointed at the arrival of experienced players and the performance younger ones as factors behind Bengal being successful.
Lal said: “It’s not about telling them anything but the journey we had together. It’s about the mutual trust and believing in each other. When I am not performing let my team mate perform, if you have this kind of mentality it takes the team forward. The individual is irrelevant, it doesn’t matter who you are. You are a part of the team and the team has to perform and prevail.
“You may be a Manoj Tiwari who is a stalwart of Bengal cricket but if you are playing in the eleven and a youngster then you are as important as him. That is the culture I tried to bring in the team.”
Lal went through a painful cancer surgery at the Tata Cancer Hospital & Research in Kolkata during 2016. Lal explained his ordeal to Indian Express.
“There were eight-nine tubes in me. You are like a living dead body. You are not breathing yourself. You are not urinating yourself. You are not talking. Your mouth is closed. You are not defecating yourself. You can’t move. My right arm was paralysed. My left leg was gone, because they removed everything from there to make my face.
“There I remember I was trying to breathe and it was appearing very hot. I didn’t realise, even though I was trying to breathe, it wasn’t going in. Because they make a hole in your trachea and put a tube inside into your lungs and they feed the lungs separately.”
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