He sat next to MI’s then-Director of Cricket Operations, Zaheer Khan, and their chats flowed like they had all season as one of the tournament’s finest finals unfolded in Hyderabad.
Rasikh Salam found himself in a favourable position in the Mumbai Indians’ dugout in May 2019, as the team attempted to outperform rival IPL dynasty Chennai Super Kings and win a fourth title. Rasikh played his first and only game of the season over two months ago, yet his seating arrangement remained unchanged.
Rasikh, who was still relatively inexperienced, was identified as a potential player and assigned to sit in during matches with the former India bowler. Zaheer Khan engaged the child into chats that forced him to think deeper about the game. Rasikh found the veteran’s explanations difficult to comprehend at the moment.
He [Zaheer Khan] would take notes on what was going on in a specific over and then ask me what the bowler should do next. He’d ask, “If you were there, what would you do?” Rasikh tells Cricbuzz that he didn’t understand many of the topics we discussed at the time, but as he’s gotten older, he understands their significance.
I would question why he was telling me to read the game. However, he would add that, in addition to your competence, you should be able to read the game. He used to tell me how to do it and how to use my intellect during the game. To teach my thinking in that way at the time, I believe was the mark of a great coach.”
In his first coaching position, Zaheer Khan brought an analytical mind honed by a successful playing career.
There are no guarantees that instincts from the field will translate into coaching, but early indications suggested they did for him. At MI, however, Zaheer Khan had the advantage of entering into a setup that was already geared to run at top speed, and an airtight coaching structure meant that no one stepped on each other’s toes. According to MI, the head coach, Mahela Jayawardene, was the driving force behind the team.
We were quite aggressive in our scouting. As a management team, we would spend significant periods of time discussing the competition, our own squad, and then devising methods. Zaheer Khan had a significant part in it,” says James Pamment to Cricbuzz. Pamment was a valuable member of the MI coaching team from 2018 to 2024, as a fielding specialist and assistant coach.
He [Zaheer Khan] was quite tactically astute, particularly when it came to bowling strategies. He provided valuable input as we were figuring out how to bowl to the opposition’s best players. But on the grass, he was just incredibly pleasant, with a laid-back demeanour. He was clearly quite knowledgeable about the technical aspects. But he never crossed the line.”
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Trent Boult arrived at MI in 2020 and found an ally in Zaheer Khan, with whom he discussed tactical aspects of left-arm fast bowling. With Shane Bond as the bowling coach, Zaheer Khan was always careful not to go too far. Zaheer, in fact, brought much more to the table than just his tactical skills.
