New Delhi: New Mumbai Indians head coach Kieron Pollard named Robin Singh, Phil Simmons, Mahela Jayawardene and Ricky Ponting as the coaches who have influenced him the most, and credited them for showcasing qualities which have left a mark on him.
Pollard spent the last four IPL seasons as MI’s batting coach, after having retired as a player from the league ahead of the 2023 edition, and has now been elevated to the top job. He takes charge of MI ahead of IPL 2027 after Jayawardene, under whom he worked for a decade, parted ways with the franchise last week. Ponting, his former MI captain, will now be his rival head coach at Punjab Kings.
“One coach I’ve taken a lot from is Robin Singh. I came in 2010, and he was a coach at that time. And the amount of work, the work ethic, part of it, was next to none. He didn’t know when to stop, right! But it was something that I’ll never forget because the work that he would have put in, would have given me the opportunity to go out and perform.
“Then you look at somebody like a Phil Simmons outside of the IPL zone; the calmness that he brings and it gives you the opportunity to express yourself as a person and as a cricketer. Use your instinctive abilities to make decisions as a leader and as a cricketer, and then we come and we speak about it after, and try to dissect certain things as to why it would have happened that way.
“So those are the couple of people, and then obviously I spoke about Mahela, the tactical genius of what he brought; it’s next to none, and that sometimes is taken for granted. Things that people would not think about, set fields and that that was, from a fantastic perspective.
“And again, one of my rivals would now be my rival coach. You will walk into a wall for somebody like Ricky Ponting, the way he motivates you, but when he’s finished with you in that perspective, not even a wall can stop you at that time,” said Pollard in a video on the franchise’s social media accounts on Saturday.
MI was the only IPL team Pollard played for in the IPL. Signed ahead of the 2010 season, he turned out for them in 189 matches till 2022, scoring 3412 runs and taking 69 wickets. Pollard was part of all five of the franchise’s IPL title triumphs in 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2020, respectively. IANS
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