"The Test", the amazon prime web series, became an instant hit among fans and wider cricket fraternity for chronicling the journey of the Australian team regaining its lost ground after the ball-tampering saga.
Led by head coach Justin Langer and skipper Tim Paine, the acclaimed web-series shows how the team made a genuine effort to imbibe the values of "play hard but fair".
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It recalls how the side dealt with the absence of David Warner, Steve Smith and welcomed them back into a new team culture post their bans for the summer in England last year, featuring the World Cup and the Ashes.
Australia successfully left those ill-fated hours of the 2018 Cape Town Test behind it, enjoyed a great run until the World Cup semi-final against England, and then retained the urn in UK for the very first time in country's history since 2001.
Langer's guidance and Paine's leadership had a lot to do with that.
"What you see is all real, there were no retakes, all the visuals are raw and natural," S Sriram, the team's spin bowling coach, reaccounted in an interview with PTI. "I think it's a brilliant story of our (the Australian Team's) journey from Cape Town to the end of the Ashes. I consider myself very fortunate to have been a part of the journey."
Fans were given rare access to the dressing room chats, the pain of losing and the excitement post victory. "The cameraman did a fantastic job and integrated into the team easily," said Sriram. "What you see is what you get with our players and the management group."
"As I said, I consider myself very fortunate to be a part of this journey and this is a great group of people to work with," added the man who has now been part of the Aussie set-up for nearly five years.
Working with Langer, Sriram believes, has helped him grow as a person and coach. "Working with Justin Langer has been a great learning curve for me," he said. "He is very honest, extremely hardworking and expects high standards from his staff and players. It doesn't surprise me what he has achieved in this journey with the team."
The feeling seems to be mutual here with Langer in one of the episodes seen hailing Sriram's positive mindset ahead of the last day of the Dubai Test against Pakistan. Sriram genuinely believed that the Aussies could save the rubber and, led by Usman Khawaja's outstanding hundred, they eventually did.
"I felt we had prepared very well for their bowlers. Yasir Shah was coming back after an injury and Bilal Asif was making his debut," he said.
"A lot of pressure was on Yasir and Mohammed Abbas to bowl us out and we knew that if we built a partnership early, they would try a lot of things, which is what happened."
In his job, Sriram gets to also spend a lot of time with Nathan Lyon, arguably the world's best off-spinner.
"Luckily, I have a great relationship with Nathan and it has taken time to build," he said. "I now understand his bowling, what makes him tick, what I have to look for in his bowling and what is his best preparation for every series."
(Inputs from PTI)
