Ajay Ratra finishes refresher course with Cricket Australia during lockdown

After finishing his career with Tripura, former Indian keeper Ajay Ratra, who is best remembered for his fantastic innings against West Indies in Antigua, took up coaching as a profession. He has been closely associated with National Cricket Academy while conducted coaching camps for the Indian women's team in the lead up to T20 World Cup. He is now coaching Assam Ranji Team but after the lockdown, period gave him a chance to finish a course with Cricket Australia.

“In 2017 BCCI had organised a course in collaboration with Cricket Australia. In that, me and several others had attended that in Bangalore. Coaches from Australia had come down for that one held at the National Cricket Academy. It was a Level-II refresher course and was called Level B reaccreditation course. After that, I had done another online course with them. I got a mail from them that my course was getting expired on June 30 and I should do a refresher course," Ratra told Mumbai Mirror.

“They send you modules that include both text and videos. You read them and at the end give an exam. This one was called Introduction to Australian Cricket and had seven modules. The earlier online thing that I had done was called – Post Community Coach and Pre-Representative Coach. So I was able to renew this one and do a new one also."

With the coaching methodology evolving with time, there has been a fresh emphasis on the youngster management and Ratra stated that the current modules focus on batting, bowling, fielding, nutrition and fitness with the teaching of how to deal with young cricketers and help them think on their own.

“There are modules on batting, bowling, fielding, nutrition and fitness. A lot of emphasis in this module was on how to deal with young cricketers and help them think on their own. For example, you tell a player that what is an off-drive but not tell him one particular way to play it. You have to let them find their own technique of playing that. You give them the basic idea but not spoon-feed them. The module also spoke about how to conduct practice sessions,” he said.