Cricket coach Robin Singh From Trinidad to India and everywhere else

Crick­et coach Robin Singh has moved from Trinidad to In­dia and just about every­where else. And what a jour­ney this has been for the well-known crick­eter-now-coach who was born in Princes Town, and who has been trav­el­ling since de­part­ing these shore many years ago. Af­ter leav­ing Trinidad, he end­ed up stay­ing in In­dia and mak­ing a name for him­self in the crick­et­ing world, rep­re­sent­ing that coun­try at the high­est lev­el both as a play­er and coach.

That he rep­re­sent­ed and cap­tained Trinidad and To­ba­go at the un­der-19 lev­el and played a cou­ple of games for the se­nior T&T team be­fore head­ing off to In­dia is the stuff that dreams are made of.

In his play­ing hey­day, he was an all-rounder, a left-hand­ed bats­man, right-hand­ed bowler, and ex­cit­ing field­s­man. Fol­low­ing his T&T play­ing days, he went on to rep­re­sent In­dia in 136 One Day In­ter­na­tion­al match­es scor­ing over 2,000 runs with one cen­tu­ry and nine half-cen­turies, cap­tured 69 wick­ets with a best of five for 22 and held 33 catch­es. His in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer spanned from 1989 to 2001 fol­low­ing which he re­tired and then be­came a coach.

Wis­den de­scribed him as an ath­let­ic, tena­cious and com­mit­ted all-rounder. Read­ers can catch a glimpse of him in his hey­day in ac­tion.

As the high­ly re­gard­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-ac­claimed coach of the win­ning Mum­bai In­di­ans in the huge­ly pop­u­lar IPL (In­di­an Pre­mier League) he has al­so been one of the pre­mier coach­es of the Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents fran­chise in the CPL. T&T’s crick­et­ing su­per­star Kieron Pol­lard has been a mem­ber of both the Mum­bai and Bar­ba­dos squads which Singh coach­es.

The 55-year-old glo­be­trot­ting coach will don the colors of the St Kitts Pa­tri­ots in the 2019 CPL edi­tion.

Singh be­gan his coach­ing ca­reer al­most im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter his play­ing days. He was asked by then pres­i­dent of the BC­CI Jag­mo­han Dalmiya to coach In­dia’s A team and un­der-19 teams.

Tours to Pak­istan, Eng­land, Aus­tralia, and a World Cup un­earthed a wealth of In­di­an tal­ent who went on to be­come big names in In­di­an crick­et. Ro­hit Shar­ma, Shikhar Dhawan, Ir­fan Pathan, Am­bati Rayudu, Robin Uthap­pa, Parthiv Pa­tel, and Ravin­dra Jade­ja have all donned In­dia’s se­nior colors un­der his tute­lage.

Hong Kong crick­et ap­proached him to coach their na­tion­al team in 2004 and un­der his tenure qual­i­fied to play in the Asia Cup and gained ODI sta­tus. He was award­ed for Coach­ing Ex­cel­lence by Hong Kong.

Af­ter the In­di­an Na­tion­al Team suf­fered an un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous ex­it in the 2007 World Cup he was an­nounced as the field­ing coach. With­out a head coach and just Singh, a man­ag­er and bowl­ing coach, a young In­di­an team went on to win the first-ever T20 World Cup in 2007.

In 2008, world crick­et saw the in­tro­duc­tion of T20 leagues with the ar­rival of the IPL in In­dia. It has grown in stature every year with al­most every crick­et play­ing na­tion hav­ing their own leagues al­ready or plan­ning to. This is the for­mat in which Singh has be­come syn­ony­mous and has gained im­mense recog­ni­tion and con­sid­ered among the top few in­ter­na­tion­al coach­es.

To­day the cham­pi­on team with the most ti­tles (four) in the IPL is the Mum­bai In­di­ans. He has been with them since 2010 and it has been the turn­ing point of the side’s his­to­ry. They have al­so won two Glob­al league cham­pi­onships called the Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy.

Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, he was ap­point­ed coach in oth­er coun­try leagues name­ly Bangladesh, Sri Lan­ka, and the West In­dies…the first for an In­di­an coach. His team UVA won the on­ly year Sri Lan­ka held a T20 League. He has coached Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents since the in­cep­tion of The CPL. They have won once and made the semis twice. Here his mul­ti-cul­tur­al per­son­al­i­ty and back­ground helped him im­mense­ly. Hav­ing grown up in Trinidad and played for ten years dur­ing the sum­mers in the UK, he is very com­fort­able with play­ers of var­i­ous na­tion­al­i­ties.

Dur­ing the years 2012 -2014 he was ap­proached by the USA Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion to coach their Un­der 19s in prepa­ra­tion for their World Cup cam­paigns. He went on to coach both their Se­nior Men’s and Women’s teams.

A ten-over for­mat in World crick­et was in­tro­duced in 2017 for the very first time in the UAE. Each year it has at­tract­ed 100 top crick­eters from all over the world for this ever in­creas­ing­ly pop­u­lar ‘crick­et car­ni­val’ called T10 crick­et. In the in­tro­duc­to­ry year 2017, Singh was roped in by the fran­chise, Kerela Kings.

As with all oth­er fran­chis­es where he is the coach he analy­ses play­ers, play­ing con­di­tions, op­po­nents, then strate­gis­es and se­lects the best team in a live tele­cast play­er auc­tion. Kerela Kings won the in­au­gur­al tro­phy. Robin switched to a dif­fer­ent fran­chise for the fol­low­ing year, North­ern War­riors, and guid­ed them to the ti­tle vic­to­ry. Back-to-back ti­tles in the on­ly T10 tour­na­ment ever held, al­beit with dif­fer­ent teams!

He has re­cent­ly opened his own Crick­et Acad­e­my in Dubai…the aim of the acad­e­my is to hone the skills of young as­pi­rants and pro­vide the guid­ance and fa­cil­i­ties to crick­eters dur­ing their off-sea­son or pre-tour­na­ment prepa­ra­tions.

Look out for more of Robin Singh on the crick­et­ing front as he promis­es much more in the years ahead.