Nepal head coach Stuart Law has told his players to “put social media away” and get back to basics after two opening defeats left their T20 World Cup campaign hanging by a thread.
Nepal sit bottom of Group C following a heart-stopping four-run loss to England and a flat, 47-run defeat to tournament newcomers Italy. To stay alive, they now have to beat both West Indies and Scotland in Mumbai this week.
“I think the way that we’ve got to look at it now is we’ve got to work out why the gulf from the England game to the Italy game happened,” Law said on the eve of the West Indies fixture. The Australian was blunt about what he sees as a major distraction in the camp. “I think if the Nepalese people in the room here, I think they will understand that social media is a massive part of the Nepalese culture. To me, social media can be a huge distraction. If you’re focusing on what you’re doing on social media, if you’re focusing on what people are saying about us on social media, and not focusing on what the team needs, the team-mates are saying, and the game applies, you’re distracted from your actual job.”
Any coach will tell you players scroll feeds, sometimes even in the dressing-room. Law accepts the commercial realities – extra clicks often lead to extra rupees – yet he feels timing is everything. “It’s a difficult one because I know a lot of the players, they rely on it to gain endorsements and sponsorship, etc. But I think also that at World Cups, cricket is the main thing. I’ve tried to explain to them that if we keep winning games of cricket, your likes will go up anyway.”
Four days earlier, Lokesh Bam’s late surge had almost pinched a famous win over England. Expectations shot up, perhaps too far too soon, and Italy – ranked 21st – took full advantage with an organised bowling display and cool chase. For Law, the swing in performance exposed a mental gap more than a technical one.
“You don’t have to keep showing your face if you show that cricket in Nepal is going forward and we’re winning games of cricket. Your attraction on social media will go through the roof. It’s a difficult one for me because I’m a social media dinosaur, I don’t understand it. I know the negative impact it can have, but I don’t quite understand the positive impact. So I’m being educated on this as well, and trying to strike a happy medium with the players, to make sure they’re focused on their cricket, number one, and the rest of the nonsense that I call it – I’ve said that to the boys today – take that away from cricket, do it away from cricket. When you’re in cricket, do your cricket.”
Nepal’s ranking of 18th in T20 internationals tells only part of the story. Over the last 18 months they have caused more than one Full Member to sweat in bilateral tours, largely through skilful new-ball swing and fearless lower-order hitting. Tournament cricket, however, tests consistency rather than flashes of brilliance.
“To go from that high to then go to an extreme low four days later, that’s not showing mental toughness,” Law said. “It’s not showing commitment to your team, to your country, to your family, to your team-mates. So we need to make sure that we understand that we need to do that better, and how we address that from now on needs to come from good conversations, positive conversations. But also, don’t just say you can’t do it. Pick and choose the times that you do it properly.”
The message is straightforward enough: switch the phones off, tighten the skills, and trust the process. For West Indies, leaders of the group after tidy wins over Scotland and Italy, the danger remains real. “Nepal are never easy,” West Indies assistant coach Roddy Estwick said yesterday. “If they get a sniff, they can be very hard to stop.”
A win for Nepal keeps qualification in play; another defeat ends it. Either way, Law is adamant that likes and follows will look after themselves if the cricket does the talking first.
