He was an average cricketer who never made it to his national team. But John Marshall Buchanan has defied the odds and become a world-renowned coach — and he has equally big off-field dreams.

If anyone was wondering what Buchanan would do after parting ways with the Australian cricket team, they needn’t have worried. There’s still heaps happening in the life of the 55-year-old, who’s currently in India coaching the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR).

He’s made a name as a corporate coach and he’s writing books on his training wisdom. Buck, (as his friends call him) is also in demand as a speaker in the corporate world. “In Australia, the response has been very good. Hopefully it’ll happen in India too. I am keen to explore all avenues,” he says.

Soon after stepping down as Australia’s coach he started Buchanan Success Coaching. Says Buchanan: “It’s about doing exactly the same things — ideas, concepts. It’s coaching the corporate world, trying to take their teams where they haven’t been before.”

When he isn’t globetrotting, or playing mentor to cricketers and corporate types, Buchanan likes to laze around in his house in Brisbane. There’s plenty of catching up to do with wife Judith and their five children — three sons and two daughters, and occasionally indulge in some gardening at the backyard. “It’s a big family, plenty of things keep happening,” he laughs.

He has to travel a lot but now reckons that home is the most beautiful place in the world. At the moment he has been staying at Hotel ITC The Sonar Calcutta with the KKR team for the Indian Premier League (IPL). But he does have one member of the family along on this trip. His eldest son, Michael, is the strength and conditioning coach of the KKR team.

How good a parent is he? “I was away too much. I could be a lot better,” he admits. “I have a lovely wife, who has made our family who they are. When I am home, I try to be as good a dad as possible,” he says.

He’s trying to get used to “being a part of a franchise and not a state or national team”. But Buchanan has become a strong supporter of Twenty20 cricket. “The concept is right and it is capturing everybody’s imagination,” he says.

But T20, he feels, should always be played in the current franchise format (like IPL). “I don’t believe it is the future of the game if it’s played like the ODIs,” says Buchanan. The administrators of the game, he says, need to think very carefully about all the three existing formats — the Tests, one-day Internationals and Twenty20.

And how is Shah Rukh Khan? “He is a mega-star. And for all that stardom, he is a very humble person. He has a great vision and is very supportive,” he says.

The young Buchanan began his career playing for Queensland between 1978-79. “Like all youngsters in Australia, I wanted to play for the country. I followed that dream but then I realised it wasn’t to happen,” he reminisces. So he figured his best bet would be to get into sport administration.

He went on to serve as the sports coordinator of the XIIth Commonwealth Games, the national director of the Volleyball Federation and manager — sports development at the Department of Tourism, Sports and Racing.

John Buchanan with Shah Rukh Khan (centre) and Sourav Ganguly at a promotional event; (Below) Buchanan celebrates the victory against Delhi Daredevils with Ashoke Dinda at the Eden Gardens

After that, he briefly went back to teaching at Queensland University in 1986. “It gave me new horizons to look at,” he says. Despite trying his hand at so many things, Buchanan felt there was something missing. So he returned to coaching and started with the local team. This, he felt, was what he had been looking for all along.

He struck gold in his first season as coach, guiding the Queensland Bulls to their first ever Sheffield Shield in 1994-95. And then in 1999, he replaced Geoff Marsh as the Australian team’s coach despite never having played at the Test level.

Did that come as a surprise to him? “Not really. My coaching experience was good. But I was apprehensive about whether my ideas would work with the team. But I was well supported by Steve (Waugh). And then we started winning consistently,” he explains.

Buchanan led the team to a number of world records, which includes winning two World Cups as a coach (he’s the only coach to have achieved this). Buchanan also has a winning record of 70 per cent since 1999. “In the end, I’ve never been driven by results. What’s important is figuring out how to get there. Stick to the process,” he says.

Not everyone approved of his methods and Shane Warne clearly didn’t, claiming Buchanan was a “goose” with “verbal diarrhoea”. Then again, on the 2001 Ashes tour, Buchanan’s interpretation of the teachings of the warlord Sun Tzu were lambasted by the English media.

So what plans does he have for KKR? “The vision is to make it the best franchise. And that includes everything — the way we do things, the way we play...We want to reach beyond the Calcutta community. But we are still at an exploratory stage,” he admits.

Having worked with greats like Waugh and Ricky Ponting, how was working with Sourav Ganguly? “There were a lot of stories about him. His relationships with other coaches seemed to be a bit rocky. At the moment we are working fine. All of us are learning — he as a captain, me as a coach. He’s learning reasonably quickly and that will benefit the team,” says the coach.

Besides the IPL, Buchanan is at the moment excited about his book, If Better Is Possible. “It is a book for managers, coaches. I enjoyed writing the book,” he says, adding that he is planning yet another.

There have been controversies over the franchises but Buchanan says the KKR management has been very supportive. He says: “Where they want to go is where I would like to be going as well. And I would like to be a part of the journey.”