Venkatesh Prasad hoping to ‘study’ foreign players during IPL

New Delhi, April 12: India’s bowling coach Venkatesh Prasad believes that the upcoming IPL Twenty20 tournament in South Africa will present an opportunity for him and the Indian team members to study and decipher the technique of foreign players, which will help strengthen India’s chances in the Twenty20 World Cup to be held later this year in England.

"Most of the international players will look to use the IPL as a launchpad for the World Twenty20 and you have to be smart here. It`s all about how much of information you want to share and how much information you can gain from others. I am sure there will be a lot of people who would like to know a lot about the Indian team. So I need to be very clear about how much of information I would like to share with others, even if they are from your own IPL team,” Prasad told a cricket website.

"At the same time, I would like to pick the brains of players like Freddie Flintoff, Ntini, Morkel or even Stephen Fleming (Chennai`s head coach) in terms of how the New Zealand guys go about their business in a Twenty20 situation," the former Indian bowler added.

Prasad also said that the conditions this time around will be different than last year and it would be interesting to see how the foreign coaches cope up with the challenge.

"I really don`t know if the domestic players would be able to understand what the foreign coaches are saying. I am not very sure about that. I am not criticising anybody here. But the fact is the way we play our cricket is completely different. So I don`t know how coaches who don`t know how we play our cricket are going to manage.”

"In India, the whole approach is slightly different; for instance, we use much more of our wrists than anybody else, we play more by instinct. We take most of our decisions out there (on the field). You might have a plan, but you also need to go out there and use your mind in terms of assessing the situation and dealing with it," he said.

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