Former Hampshire allrounder Raj Maru is helping to develop and nurture students and alumni at the West Sussex school
When The Cricketer last spoke to Raj Maru, the former Hampshire spinner now Lancing College's head of cricket suggested watching out for Alice Capsey.
The teenage allrounder, then still a student at the school under Maru's tutelage, had just turned 17 at the time and was about to embark on the season of her young life.
Before the summer was out, she had starred in The Hundred – including a half century at Lord's – and was named as player of the match in the Charlotte Edwards Cup final. A clamour followed, and she was thrust onto an England A tour of Australia.
The second act is always the greater challenge, however, and Capsey has found runs harder to come by in the opening months. "But then people work you out a little bit, and you then need to work them out," says Maru, who was born in Kenya before moving to the UK as a child and ending up with 504 first-class wickets.
Coaching has been his calling since his retirement from playing, and he began at Lancing on the same day that Mason Crane joined the school as a student. The pair have maintained their relationship ever since and have spent recent weeks working together after the Hampshire leg-spinner got in touch with his long-time, much-trusted coach on the back of a mediocre start to his campaign that included a loan spell at Sussex, from where Maru first helped to instigate his move into Hampshire's age-group setup more than a decade ago.
"He didn't have the greatest start to the season, but give him credit: four weeks ago, he rang up and asked if I had any spare time," says Maru. "He told me he was struggling a little bit, so we cleared it with Hampshire and now we've done about three sessions so far."
Former Lancing College student Alice Capsey who burst onto the scene at The Hundred [Getty Images]
His output has improved: he has picked up six wickets in his last four games, having claimed just one in the previous five. The struggles described by Maru were mainly technical – an issue with his front arm brought on by the positioning of his front foot.
He explains: "We got him to bowl from six inches wider, to drop the arm by six inches and to start using the front arm properly. Suddenly, things started to fall back into place.
"You have to be brave and have some sort of guts to ask for help. For him to do that shows maturity and a lot of courage. It's not easy doing that."
While Maru is respectful of Crane's self-awareness, it is also a gratifying marker of the relationship built between the duo during the leg-spinner's time at Lancing. When Crane was with England's enlarged squad last winter in Sri Lanka, they spoke regularly about how things were going; Maru still watches him closely when bowling on television and gets in touch if he spots anything worth passing on.
They shared a long conversation about confidence recently, when Crane made contact. He has only played a single County Championship match this year for Hampshire – at Canterbury against Kent – and went wicketless. Maru suggested he turn out for Lancing's Old Boys – Lancing Rovers – against Tonbridge in the Cricketer Cup as a means of playing an afternoon's low-pressure cricket.
"One, it meant coming back to where it all began," says Maru. "Two, he'd be playing with his best friends from school. Three, there's no pressure so he could enjoy what he was doing. I think he only bowled an over at the end. He absolutely enjoyed the day. He could relax. He didn't really appreciate until that weekend what Lancing actually did for him."
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