Team India’s backroom staff includes a former maths teacher, a mountaineer, a former bus driver, an IT engineer, and a civic police volunteer

Having implemented the workload management policy at the NCA, Dravid has been using this expertise in the lead-up to the World Cup. With a young crop of pacers – who he is familiar with thanks to his stint with U-19 and India A – Mhambrey is also putting the transition plan in place in red-ball cricket and T20Is. He doesn’t believe in spending too much time in team meetings, and instead likes to slip in all the data and analytics through the dashboard, which is on every player’s phone. In that sense, he is every bit a modern-day coach, who prefers to mix data with coaching manuals. Like his predecessor Bharat Arun, he has carried forward the five-bowlers theory at all costs.

In the lead-up to the World Cup with star pacer Jasprit Bumrah injured, instead of grooming the likes of Arshdeep Singh, Shivam Mavi, Avesh Khan, it was Mhambrey who advocated Mohammed Shami’s inclusion, despite the seamer having played very few ODIs in the recent past.

The only coaching staff to be associated with this team since Ravi Shastri & his men left the space. From the time he came on board after the previous World Cup, he has been harping about the need to be a lot more aggressive with the bat. And it is only at this World Cup that the world got to see the true potential and might of India’s line-up.

Not the most gifted batsman during his playing days, after hanging up his boots, Rathour spent a few years in England before returning to coach Punjab and Himachal on the domestic circuit. He was also a national selector when Virat Kohli was captain. The 54-year-old is at the forefront of India’s training sessions, where he usually makes the schedule. A firm believer in giving batsmen freedom to go for shots irrespective of the format, Rathour has publicly backed the likes of Rohit Sharma, Rishabh Pant and Shreyas Iyer when they have been dismissed going for the big shots in Tests.

Behind the scenes, he prefers to have one-on-one sessions with batsmen on almost a series-by-series basis. Not known to tinker much with their technique, but also the first to jump in and have a say at the nets if he sees something missing. To make it easier for the players, he instructs the team’s data analyst to video-record their net sessions and play it later on. He is known to seldom show his emotions and was even tipped to take a top role at the NCA