This man coached Rachin Ravindra in Chennai to a set of series winning knocks late last year in the test series against India. He is now working on getting the next gen of CSK Academy cricketers to the highest level in cricket
Close to 25 centers, strong remote towns presence and an overseas expansion
It is a Sunday afternoon and those he had coached during his long stint in New Zealand are to take the field in the Champions Trophy final against India. But 38 year old Sriram Krishamurthy makes time at short notice to talk to this writer on how his engagement with the CSK Academy has been. Rachin Ravindra has been in very good form of late and Sriram’s mind tells him that NZ will lift the trophy. In the not too distant past, Sriram Krishnamurthy made an impactful difference and played a major contributory role in New Zealand’s 3-0 demolition of India in the test series.
Rachin Ravindra scored a century in the first test match and a 60 in the second. For a month prior, he had worked with Sriram at the CSK Academy on the finer aspects of playing in Indian conditions and taking on the Indian spinners and the results were there to see. He has just scored a couple of hundreds in one day cricket in the Champions Trophy to become an important all format player for the Kiwis. Sriram does not talk much about the players he has coached but a lot of the background work on Rachin being mentally and technially prepared for the India battle was done at the CSK Academy nets in Chennai by Sriram.
Finally an association with cricket in TN
In New Zealand, Sriram Krishnamurthy had worked with the likes of Tim Southee, Kane Williamson and Wagner in addition to Rachin and Devon (Conway). While he enjoyed his overseas stints greats and continues to engage with those, he had always wanted to contribute to cricket in TN. And here he was in early 2023 making a move back to Chennai to fulfil that lifetime wish and to coach at the grass root level with young unknown kids who had not yet made a mark in cricket. “I clearly knew the challenges ahead of me when CSK approached me to take to the role of the head coach of the CSK Academy. They spoke with passion on where they wanted to take the academy and that resonated in me in terms of contributing to TN cricket, something that I had been wanting to do ever since I decided to make cricket my professional career.”
Sriram is also happy that his two young sons will be growing up in a traditional environment in Chennai and that they will get to see our rich culture at an early stage in their life, something that he and his wife really value.
Wants to see his coaches in districts succeed
In the last 2 years, Sriram has hired over 125 coaches many of them aged below 30 to work with kids in the districts and says that his greatest joy has been in seeing his coaches succeed “My biggest happiness as I look back on these two years at the CSK Academy has been the fact that the coaches here are in synch with my vision for the kids. If any of these kids are now beginning to make their way into the age group squads for TN, the credit for that goes to these coaches. From the outset, when we began hiring them, we knew that they have come here for a long term career and that they have to take care of the family. CSK has taken to this completely professionally and have provided the coaches with PF, Gratuity and other long term financial benefits. This is something unheard of in the past for a coaching academy. I believe that the coaches have taken a great step forward in the creating the next generation of cricketers who sometime in the future will play for the state and in other forms of cricket at the highest level.”
Sriram's success at CSK Academy
He is looking forward to the day when the entire coaching eco system at the CSK Academy will function independently without his presence “I have always held that even without my presence the coaches should be able to hold their own in terms of the coaching vision. I think we have been able to make solid progress on this front in the time I have been here.”
Sriram is happy that the impact of this coaching eco system is positively impacting the district cricketers, and boys and girls from remote towns in TN are now making their way into the TN age group squads as can be seen from their contribution in the current season.
Great Exposure for teenaged cricketers
2000 cricketers in TN are now being coached all through the year in the CSK Academy at different locations and a number of them are now getting exposure in league cricket in Chennai. Sriram is happy that some of the CSK Academy students are being spotted and picked by non India Cements team in the first division, an indication of the real progress made by these players. He dispels the myth that the CSK Academy is only about grooming players for the CSK team. “I have often heard this comment that this Academy is all about getting players ready for CSK. But as the Head Coach, my role is to create top quality players who will be ready to take on any challenge on the field. Once in the auction, any player could be picked by any franchise and hence it is a myth that only CSK will have access to our academy players. They could play for any team in the first division or for any franchise in the IPL but they should be at home anywhere in any team.”
Sriram himself has recently had exposure to the IPL auction with him being present in an internal mock auction of CSK, again something that surprised him as an opportunity.
CSK Academy growing rapidly
When this section wrote a story on Sriram after he decided to move from the Kiwi land to Chennai in early 2023 (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2022/11/sriram-krishnamurthy-head-coach-super.html), CSK Academy had just two centers. But in these 24 months, it is touching on 25 and expanding rapidly including in overseas locations. The academy is focusing on Tier 2 and 3 towns in Tamil Nadu and very soon will expand into more smaller towns.
Sriram is delighted that the CSK Academy management has given him opportunity to even engage in business conversations and that is something he had not expected. He feels that he has been greatly empowered by the CSK management “Kasi (Sir), George (Anna), Louis ( Anna) and the small sized leadership team have given me great exposure by allowing me to engage with prospective franchisees for our academy expansion. And that has been a great opportunity for me to enter into the business side in addition to the coaching aspect that is core to my job. It was yet another occasion when they made me feel that my opinion counts.”
National Teams- opportunities come his way
During these two years, CSK has given him the freedom and flexibility to coach international teams like he had when he was in New Zealand earlier. In the recent past, Sriram Krishnamurthy has coached the NZ women’s team in Sri Lanka and the West Indian A team. He has also been the head coach of the NZ A team. He also put through a deal between CSK and NZ board that resulted in Black Cap players coming to the CSK Academy to train.
In December last, Sriram was invited by the West Indies board to coach their players at their national camp. Once again, Sriram says that CSK was kind enough to allow him to take up this opportunity and this has allowed him to enjoy the best of both worlds – engaging with international cricketers as well as coaching at the grass roots level in Tamil Nadu.
Later this year, he will be engaging with the West Indies players during their tour to India.
World Class cricket infra in the TN Districts
The CEO of CSK KS Viswanathan (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2015/02/ks-viswanathan-tnca-bcci-ipl.html) is pleased with the progress made by CSK Academy. "In a short period of time, we have been able to attract good coaches as well as students in thousands to our academy. Having come from a small town (Kallidaikuruchi) near Tirunelveli, the cricketing opportunities in South TN were very limited in the 1960s and 70s and I had to come to Chennai to get the much needed exposure. Today through our CSK academy we have been able to take cricket coaching to the interiors of the state and young boys in the districts now have access to the best of cricketing infrastructure and the results are there to see with district cricketers making their way into the state squad in age group cricket."
"Also, as a business opportunity, the CSK brand has been able to attract franchisees in small towns in TN and that has helped expand the CSK Academy network quite rapidly in the last two years."
His Big Cricketing Wish
The India New Zealand final is just a few minutes away and this writer has long overshot his time. Sriram is eager to get to the match and leaves the conversation in a happy frame of mind looking back at what has been a glorious two years at the CSK Academy with a big wish of one day coaching a national team to a World Cup victory. Despite all his achievements, Sriram Krishnamurthy likes to remain low profile focusing on the job at hand. This section will write a story when that big dream becomes a reality some day in the future but for the moment he has moved on to watch Rachin Ravindra in action in the Champions Trophy final.
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