The chat that changed the Test

Sridharan Sriram, the Chennai-born allrounder who once opened the batting for India in an ODI alongside Sachin Tendulkar, has been around Australia’s Test team long enough to recognise a player out of sorts. 

That’s what the 41-year-old consultant spin coach’s instincts told him when he descended from the tourists’ viewing room and headed towards the playing arena when lunch was called on day two of the opening Test against India at Pune last Friday. 

Indeed, O’Keefe’s first spell had yielded 0-23 from seven overs of what the bowler himself would later describe as “pretty ordinary” offerings and Sriram noted his fellow left-arm orthodoxer was anxious, and decided he might benefit from some counsel. 

“I came down from the viewing area and I knew he was a little disturbed,” Sriram said today as a handful of Australians who played little or no role in their team’s drought-breaking Test win returned to the Pune venue for a training session. 

“He was walking around - I didn’t know whether to really speak to him or not. But the conversation happened and he said ‘I think I need to have a bowl with you in the centre.’ He told me he was a bit nervous to start off, and he was in his comfort zone and trying to bowl as he would do in Australia.”

“But, I said ‘OK, what do you think you need on this wicket?’ and he said ‘I need to go a little bit rounder and quicker.’ And I just said to him ‘go for it mate’ because you know what you can do and you know what you need to do.”

“Just go for it.”