Growing up in the small town of Jamshedpur, the only thing I wanted to be when I grew up was a fighter pilot, but as luck would have it, I met Dennis Lillee at the age of 14 and all I could think of from that point on was to bowl faster than any Indian had.
A lot has been said over the years about his illustrious playing career but on his 75th birthday, I would like to shed light on Lillee the coach, especially the work he did in India since 1987, which had a strong butterfly effect, transforming India's spin-heavy bowling attack to one with the formidable fast bowlers we see today.
Up until the 1990s, India, with a Test-playing history of nearly 60 years, had arguably produced only one fast bowler who could be called a great: Kapil Dev. Recognising the need for change, the late Ravi Mammen, then managing director of MRF Tyres, took it upon himself to develop the kind of fast bowlers India needed to win overseas. To do this almost impossible task he needed someone who was no stranger to the impossible.
Enter Dennis Lillee. The MRF Pace Foundation, created with the sole aim of producing tearaway fast bowlers, gave Dennis the platform he needed to express his ideas and impart his vast knowledge to young fast bowlers from India and around the world.
Subroto Banerjee , the former Test fast bowler and current India selector, was among the first batch of bowlers Dennis coached at MRF. "Dennis taught us how to be champions," he says. "If it wasn't for him, I would have never realised my full potential as a bowler."
Lillee brought with him a wealth of experience, innovative training methods, and most importantly, his all-or-nothing attitude. In an era when a scientific approach to training and coaching was virtually non-existent in India, he introduced strength training, video analysis, dietary planning, and state-of-the-art infrastructure to create an ecosystem for fast bowlers that was way ahead of its time. His knowledge of the body, mind and bowling skill enabled him to give you small but significant cues that could make you go from a 135kph bowler to 140kph-plus, or to bowl the choice of delivery you wanted to bowl.
One instance that stands out for me came after the 2014-15 India tour of Australia . I felt something amiss in my rhythm but I just couldn't put a finger on what was wrong. With the Irani Trophy coming up, followed by a few Test series in the subcontinent, I knew I had to fix things soon. The only person I thought could help me figure things out was Dennis.
I rang him hesitantly, knowing that he was not coaching formally any longer. To my surprise he agreed instantly to see me and I took the next flight out to Perth. When I got there, he said, "Look, Varun, I've seen your videos and all you have to work on is your left arm."
Most bowling coaches would have tried to make bigger changes or taken the usual approach of "Let's keep trying to hit the top of off", but Dennis knew the exact change needed for me to be able to bowl how and where I wanted. So for the next week all we did was make sure my left arm was going towards the target. I flew back to India to play the Irani Trophy match against Karnataka and picked up eight wickets .
It wasn't only what he thought of you as a bowler that gave you confidence in yourself. It was also his energy, which was positively infectious. I honestly believe that anything he touched would turn into gold.
The first time I met him was in 2004, when I was called to try out for a spot under him at MRF. The aura of the man was evident - larger than life, no-nonsense, didn't care a damn except for the job at hand. And that job was: creating the perfect fast bowler.
He selected me to be a full-time trainee and the next five years under him not only shaped me as a fast bowler but also as a human. He was a firm believer that growth happened only beyond the comfort zone, and he pushed each of us to our limits under the hot Chennai sun. In some instances, we'd bowl for a couple of hours in the sweltering heat only to be told at the end of it that we had to do a 5km time trial and were expected to finish it in 20 minutes.
With everything he taught, there was one clear undertone: "The batsman is your No. 1 enemy". Not a surprise if you remember his "love affair" with Javed Miandad .
Dennis made us realise that fast bowling isn't just a discipline in cricket but a lifestyle - to bowl fast year in year out for a whole career, one must eat, sleep and breathe fast bowling. No sacrifice was too great according to him.
My career has been plagued with a number of injuries but what troubled me most was my back. I've had a total of seven stress fractures in my back. At one point I genuinely thought all was lost and that I should give up what I loved doing the most, which was bowling as fast as I could. Dennis stepped in and gave me faith in my ability and made me believe that nothing is impossible if you put your mind to it. He went deep into explaining how he made a comeback from a major back fracture in an era where there was hardly any medical expertise to treat such issues. It forced him to develop his own methods to train and eventually recover to become the best fast bowler in the world.
I knew that he wasn't giving me fake confidence about recovering from my injuries or telling me something he hadn't done himself. That helped me buy into his approach 100%. There wasn't a battle he'd tell you to get into that he hadn't fought himself. He inspired me not only by his words but by example, and that enabled me to have an international career and bowl over 150kph even after several broken vertebrae and a back operation.
Over his 25-year tenure in India, Dennis helped produce 17 high-quality fast bowlers for the national team, most of whom bowled in excess of 140kph, and some who also broke the 150kph barrier. This includes legends like Javagal Srinath and Zaheer Khan . Plus scores more who would dominate the domestic circuit.
These bowlers who worked under his guidance were not just the new breed of Indian fast bowlers; they were influencers in their own right, changing the way fast bowlers and cricketers looked at the game in India . As people started to see the results of Dennis' work, and that of his team - bowling coach TA Sekhar , and the head of strength and conditioning at MRF, Ramji Srinivasan - the cricketing system in India as a whole began to slowly warm up to a more organised training and coaching structure. In fact, fast bowlers from several other countries - Shoaib Akhtar, Brett Lee and Tim Southee to name a few - also made trips to India to work with Dennis.
Sekhar calls Dennis "a messiah to Indian fast bowling". He recalls that Dennis didn't just have great coaching acumen but also a sharp eye for identifying talent. He remembers Dennis watching 19-year-old Zaheer Khan bowl three balls in the nets and saying, "He's playing for India."
Dennis' ability to pick young raw fast bowlers and shape them into game changers was truly amazing. If you still have any doubt about his influence on Indian cricket, consider that three of the four fast bowlers in India's World Cup-winning squads in 2007 ( Irfan Pathan , Sreesanth and RP Singh ) and in 2011 (Zaheer Khan, Sreesanth and Munaf Patel ) came up under his tutelage.
Irfan talked to me about his experience with Dennis. "A lot of people in India had a misconception that he changed people's actions, but my experience was quite the opposite," he said. "Even though I loaded up way behind my head, which a lot of coaches wanted to change, he was totally okay with it as long as my hand came down straight and not across my body. He never tinkered with people's actions unless he felt it could lead to a serious injury. He also had a lot of appreciation for my batting skills, and for a 16-year-old that was a huge confidence booster. The time I spent with him moulded me as a cricketer."
Dennis also mentored established international fast bowlers, most notably Mitchell Johnson , who made a remarkable comeback to the Australia squad, culminating in the 2013-14 series against England, which most of us call Johnson's Ashes .
Dennis' ethos of brutal honesty, determination and relentless work ethic is integral to what I see as the soul of a fast bowler. Under his tough outer shell lies a heart of pure gold, one that's immensely generous and empathetic, without which it is impossible for any one man to leave a positive imprint on so many lives and careers.
In sharing my experience of knowing and working with this great man, I know I am only echoing numerous fast bowlers around the world who owe him their careers.
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