New book offers an up-close look at how Kohli and Pant overcame their boundaries

R Sridhar with Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri

Unpopular opinion alert. Watching a final World Cup match is thrilling for sure, but talking cricket beats me. But as fate would have it, this writer is married to someone who has played professional cricket. So when he got to know of the just released book, Coaching Beyond: My Days With The Indian Cricket Team (Rupa Publications, Rs 265), by former fielding coach of the team R Sridhar, he went back to his time as a budding cricketer at Kanpur's Green Park Hostel and that one moment when he just picked up the phone and sought Sridhar's advice.

Rishabh Pant

Naturally then, the book was bought and we both started reading it over the weekend. For someone with zero technical knowledge about cricket, it was surprising to see that I still was interested in knowing how Virat Kohli somersaulted back from a bad innings in England in 2014, how he practiced hard, fuelled energy into the team and his coaches, and headed the team as a newbie Test captain when MS Dhoni announced a sudden retirement.

The writing style may not be as gripping, but Sridhar has given readers both technical and anecdotal insights that go into the making of a national cricket team. And that holds. Sridhar's own analysis of Kohli and Rishabh Pant, and how they both overcame their respective shortcomings to be better versions of themselves, surely gives motivational vibes to this writer. Some of the life lessons can also feature in the Power Point presentation of a corporate trainer or an Instagram motivational coach. The book is co-written by R Kaushik, a cricket writer for more than three decades and can easily be bought offline and online.

Available at all leading bookstores