The changing landscape of Indian cricket scouting

Once a highly subjective job, talent spotting in India is becoming scientific and empathetic.

It’s a story you have heard before but still warrants a retell purely because of the stakeholders involved – cricket in India’s hinterland, the game’s changing dynamics and the man who went on to become India’s most successful captain. The former Bengal captain Raju Mukherjee has narrated it so many times, yet retains the thrill of spotting India’s second World Cup winning captain.

A generic image of cricket bat and ball. (Getty Images)

This was 2004 and Mukherjee, one of the first TRDOs (Talent Resource Development Officer) of BCCI to unearth talent, was in Jamshedpur for a domestic tournament. That’s where he first heard about a strong, long-maned batter called Dhoni from his colleague PC Poddar. “He had never seen a man hit the cricket ball so hard. But I think Poddar didn’t like his appearance. ‘You will not like him,’ he said,” Mukherjee says.

“This was also when we were in search of wicketkeepers. I asked about his keeping and Poddar said ‘average’. I still went to Keenan Stadium the next morning. There I saw a man with bulging muscles and shoulder length hair enter on a motorbike. In half a minute the impression changed 180 degrees when I saw him taking out biscuits to feed some pariah dogs. I was thoroughly charmed,” says Mukherjee. “I asked around about Dhoni. The Jharkhand coach said he had been on the Ranji circuit for five years and yet no one knew about Dhoni. I was upset. This means some people were not doing their job.

“When the match started, Dhoni was hitting the ball with peculiar power. I saw Devang (Gandhi) duck and the ball crashed into the fence. That evening, I told Poddar that I had recommended Dhoni in my report, mentioning that he was an ‘exceptionally hard hitter’ but an ‘average keeper’. Actually, Poddar spotted him but I sent the report. Later, when India A was going to East Africa, Dinesh (Karthik) was chosen the first wicketkeeper and Dhoni the second. But Parthiv Patel was injured in England so Karthik flew to replace him.”

The rest is history.

Scouting was once seen as a highly opinionated job. First impressions mattered, like that six down the ground, a googly that flummoxes a top batter. Mukherjee hedged his bets relying on his instinct, as scouts were meant to back then. With time the process is cutting out bias by becoming more scientific and empathetic.

When Mukherjee was TRDO, BCCI would ask match referees to double up as scouts. Thanks to IPL, scouting has become a profession. “We’ve individuals who work throughout the year, watching games, spotting players,” Mahela Jayawardene, former Sri Lanka captain and Mumbai Indians’ global head of performance, told HT in 2021. “I don’t think there are secrets, it’s just hard work and finding the right people who have the ability to pick talent. You have to trust their instinct and their hard work needs to be acknowledged.”

For long, many IPL teams were wedded to the idea of holding trials. Franchises first asked contacts at state associations and National Cricket Academy (NCA) for recommendations. They were then called for trials before coaches and scouts and asked to perform in different scenarios. It was an elimination process that was perhaps not fair to a cricketer having a bad day. So, head scout Malolan Rangarajan did away with trials at Royal Challengers Bangalore.

The former Tamil Nadu captain, 33, is among the youngest scouts in India. He has made a name for having a keen eye for talent. But it’s also because he knows how it feels to be rejected by IPL. “I’ve been part of many trials where I became a superstar for just one day,” he says. “I don’t think it’s a true reflection of myself as a cricketer. As a scout too, it’s difficult to gauge talent over one day. There are a lot of other things that come into a player performing at the highest level–ability to handle pressure, decision-making, etc.”

IPL teams have top-tier internationals, India and India A players and domestic talent. Almost all are picked at auctions, a tricky business unless a player is under the radar. Like Andre Russell in the 2014 IPL auction. “Our money was over and the last bid was left,” Joy Bhattacharjya, data evangelist and KKR director till 2014, told HT in 2021. Russell wasn’t exactly in great form.

But KKR captain Gautam Gambhir (at the auction table) was the franchise’s eyes and ears. “Gambhir said ‘I have seen this guy’. He can bowl at 140 and hit the ball, he can never go to waste. And we picked him.”

But these are spur of the moment selections. “Ideally, most players we’ve picked have been observed for at least two years,” says Malolan. “At times, there might be someone who caught our eye in year one itself or one game. Instead of trials, we invite them on a confidential basis to play along with our RCB players at our monthly camps.”

Pacer Akash Deep is a product of this process. “He was doing well for Bengal in 2020 so we asked him to come aboard as an ‘intern’ as we don’t have a net bowler concept. He still went to a different franchise but we were monitoring him. In 2021, we again got him back. By then we had scouted him in 10-12 games in different formats.”

Scouts keep a tab on overseas talent as well. South Africa left-arm fast bowler Marco Jansen was being monitored by Mumbai Indians since he was 17 or 18. “We picked him the same time he was picked for South Africa (in the Test squad in January, 2021),” said Jayawardene.

Franchises have year-round presence in state and grassroots cricket, be it through academies or age-group camps. MI helps run the inter-school tournament with Mumbai, Maharashtra and Vidarbha state associations. “If it requires us to travel to that player’s district, we do that,” says Malolan. “We try not to look at the name. We look at it like a slow left-arm spinner who has a particular skill or bowls well in a particular phase or has a particularly effective delivery. We break it down to the nth detail so that he isn’t surprised when we communicate the role he has to play at RCB.”

The franchises pay attention to precise details. For four years, RCB scouting has functioned under four verticals – IPL, domestic, hinterland and international scouts. While TA Sekar, Kiran More and John Wright are the more experienced names in the business, some franchises are getting on board younger names like Abhishek Nayar (KKR), Parthiv Patel and Vinay Kumar (MI). Also what matters is the input of a new generation of data analysts like M Lakshmi Narayanan–a top advisor at CSK – and AR Srikkanth, KKR performance analyst and scouting head.

Narayanan worked with MRF Pace foundation as video analyst before joining the Tamil Nadu team. Now, he tracks players around the year. “On an average we track around 600-700 cricketers, 15 players for 10-15 international teams, 150 players in all the domestic teams,” he told HT in 2021.

Data though is not an overarching factor. “There is scouting data and there is numbers data (strike rates, average, etc.),” says Malolan. “We triangulate scouting data, numerical data and our expert wisdom because numbers often don’t paint the right picture.”

How has cricket scouting evolved compared to other sports? “Compared to NBA or football, we are still scratching the surface,” said Bhattacharjya. “You also have to remember that football leagues, basketball or NBA have seen a lot of money for 30 years or so. Baseball scouts travel across the world and catch ‘em. Cricket, end of the day, is still a 10-12 country game.”