Showing posts with label captain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label captain. Show all posts
Thursday, 20 January 2022
Sunday, 21 January 2018
Kohli's arrogance helps his game but not the team
Ramachandra Guha in Cricinfo
Watching Virat Kohli play two exquisite square drives against Australia in March 2016, I tweeted: "There goes my boyhood hero G. R. Viswanath from my all time India XI." Those boundaries formed part of a match-winning innings of 82 in a T20 World Cup quarter-final, and they confirmed for me Kohli's cricketing greatness.
I had first been struck by how good he was when watching, at the ground, a hundred he scored in a Test in Bangalore in 2012. Against a fine New Zealand attack, Sachin Tendulkar looked utterly ordinary, whereas the man who, the previous year, had carried Tendulkar on his shoulders in tribute was totally in command. Two years later, I saw on the telly every run of his dazzling 141 in Adelaide, when, in his first Test as captain, Kohli almost carried India to a remarkable win.
The admiration had steadily accumulated. So, as he struck the miserly James Faulkner and Nathan Coulter-Nile for those two defining boundaries in that T20 match in 2016, the sentimental attachments of childhood were decisively vanquished by sporting prowess. Virender Sehwag and Sunil Gavaskar would open the batting in my fantasy XI; Rahul Dravid and Tendulkar would come next; and Kohli alone could be No. 5.
That was two years ago. Now, after the staggering series of innings he has played since - not least that magnificent 153 in India's most recent Test - I would go even further. In all formats and in all situations, Kohli might already be India's greatest ever batsman.
Their orthodoxy and classicism, which served Dravid and Gavaskar so well in the Test arena, constrained them in limited-overs cricket. Sehwag had a spectacular Test record, but his one-day career was, by his own exalted standards, rather ordinary. Tendulkar was superb, often supreme, in the first innings of a Test, but he was not entirely to be relied upon in the fourth innings, or even when batting second in the 50-overs game. Besides, being captain made Tendulkar nervous and insecure in his strokeplay. On the other hand, captaincy only reinforces Kohli's innate confidence, and of course, he is absolutely brilliant while chasing.
"No one in the entire history of the game in India has quite had Kohli's combination of cricketing greatness, personal charisma, and this extraordinary drive and ambition to win for himself and his team"
I have met Kohli only once, and am unlikely to ever meet him again. But from our single conversation, and from what I have seen of him otherwise, I would say that of all of India's great sportsmen past and present, he is the most charismatic. He is a man of a manifest intelligence (not merely cricketing) and of absolute self-assurance. Gavaskar and Dravid were as articulate as Kohli in speech, but without his charisma. Kapil and Dhoni had equally strong personalities but lacked Kohli's command of words.
I was witness to the reach and range of Kohli's dominating self in my four months in the BCCI's Committee of Administrators. The board's officials worshipped him even more than the Indian cabinet worships Narendra Modi. They deferred to him absolutely, even in matters like the Future Tours Programme or the management of the National Cricket Academy, which were not within the Indian captain's ken.
In any field in India - whether it be politics or business or academia or sport - when strength of character is combined with solidity of achievement, it leads to an individual's dominance over the institution. And the fact is that, on and off the field, Kohli is truly impressive. No one in the entire history of the game in our country has quite had his combination of cricketing greatness, personal charisma, and this extraordinary drive and ambition to win for himself and his team. The only person who came close, even remotely close, is (or was) Anil Kumble.
Kumble was, by some distance, the greatest bowler produced by India. He was a superb thinker on the game. Moreover, he was well educated, well read, and had an interest in society and politics. And he was not lacking in an awareness of his own importance, although he carried his self-belief in a Kannadiga rather than Punjabi fashion.
It may be that Kumble alone is in the Kohli league as a cricketer and character. That perhaps is why they clashed and perhaps why Kumble had to go.
But why was he replaced by someone so strikingly inferior, in character and cricketing achievement, to the team's captain? A person with no coaching experience besides? Only because, like the BCCI, the chairman of the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators surrendered his liberties and his independence when confronted by the force of Kohli's personality. As did the so-called Cricket Selection Committee. Ravi Shastri was chosen over Tom Moody (and other contenders) because Vinod Rai, Tendulkar, Sourav Gangulyand VVS Laxman were intimidated by the Indian captain into subordinating the institution to the individual. The unwisdom of that decision was masked when India played at home, against weak opposition, but it can no longer be concealed.![]()
Had the BCCI thought more about cricket than commerce, we would not have had to go into this series against South Africa without a single practice match. Had the selectors been wiser or braver, India might not have been 2-0 down now.
Some Kohli bhakts will complain at the timing of this article, written after the Indian captain played such a stupendous innings himself. But this precisely is the time to remind ourselves of how we must not allow individual greatness to shade into institutional hubris. Kohli did all he could to keep India in the game, but the power of an individual in a team game can go only so far. Had Ajinkya Rahane played both Tests, had Bhuvneshwar Kumar played this Test, had India gone two weeks earlier to South Africa instead of playing gully cricket at home with the Sri Lankans, the result might have been quite different.
The BCCI and their cheerleaders brag about India being the centre of world cricket. This may be true in monetary terms, but decidedly not in sporting terms. From my own stint in the BCCI, I reached this melancholy conclusion: that were the game better administered in India, the Indian team would never lose a series. There are ten times as many cricket-crazy Indians as there are football-mad Brazilians. The BCCI has huge cash reserves. With this demographic and financial base, India should always and perennially have been the top team in all formats of the game. If India still lost matches and series, if India still hadn't, in 70 years of trying, won a Test series in Australia (a country with about as many people as Greater Mumbai), then surely the fault lay with how the game was mismanaged in the country.
To the corruption and cronyism that has so long bedevilled Indian cricket has recently been added a third ailment: the superstar syndrome. Kohli is a great player, a great leader, but in the absence of institutional checks and balances, his team will never achieve the greatness he and his fans desire.
When, in the 1970s, India won their first Test series in the West Indies and in England, Vijay Merchant was chairman of selectors. When much later, India began winning series regularly at home, the likes of Gundappa Viswanath and Dilip Vengsarkar were chairmen of selectors. Their cricketing achievements were as substantial as that of the existing players. They had the sense to consult the captain on team selection, but also had the stature to assert their own preferences over his when required. On the other hand, the present set of selectors have all played a handful of Tests apiece. The coach, Shastri, played more, but he was never a true great, and his deference to the captain is in any case obvious.
In Indian cricket today, the selectors, coaching staff and administrators are all pygmies before Kohli. That must change. The selectors must be cricketers of real achievement (as they once were). If not great cricketers themselves, they must at least have the desire and authority to stand up to the captain. Likewise, the coach must have the wisdom and courage to, when necessary, assert his authority over Kohli's (as when Kumble picked Kuldeep Yadav, a move that decided a Test and series in India's favour). And the administrators must schedule the calendar to maximise India's chances of doing well overseas, rather than with an eye to their egos and purses. (The decision not to have an extended tour of South Africa was partly influenced by the BCCI's animosity towards Cricket South Africa.)
Only when India consistently win Tests and series in South Africa, and only when they do likewise in Australia, can they properly consider themselves world champions in cricket. They have the team, and the leader, to do it. However, the captain's authority and arrogance, so vital and important to his personal success, must be moderated and managed if it is to translate into institutional greatness.
Kohli is still only 29. He will surely lead India in South Africa again and he has more than one tour of Australia ahead of him. Two years ago he secured a firm place in my all-time India XI. My wish, hope and desire is for Kohli to end his career with him also being the captain of my XI.
Watching Virat Kohli play two exquisite square drives against Australia in March 2016, I tweeted: "There goes my boyhood hero G. R. Viswanath from my all time India XI." Those boundaries formed part of a match-winning innings of 82 in a T20 World Cup quarter-final, and they confirmed for me Kohli's cricketing greatness.
I had first been struck by how good he was when watching, at the ground, a hundred he scored in a Test in Bangalore in 2012. Against a fine New Zealand attack, Sachin Tendulkar looked utterly ordinary, whereas the man who, the previous year, had carried Tendulkar on his shoulders in tribute was totally in command. Two years later, I saw on the telly every run of his dazzling 141 in Adelaide, when, in his first Test as captain, Kohli almost carried India to a remarkable win.
The admiration had steadily accumulated. So, as he struck the miserly James Faulkner and Nathan Coulter-Nile for those two defining boundaries in that T20 match in 2016, the sentimental attachments of childhood were decisively vanquished by sporting prowess. Virender Sehwag and Sunil Gavaskar would open the batting in my fantasy XI; Rahul Dravid and Tendulkar would come next; and Kohli alone could be No. 5.
That was two years ago. Now, after the staggering series of innings he has played since - not least that magnificent 153 in India's most recent Test - I would go even further. In all formats and in all situations, Kohli might already be India's greatest ever batsman.
Their orthodoxy and classicism, which served Dravid and Gavaskar so well in the Test arena, constrained them in limited-overs cricket. Sehwag had a spectacular Test record, but his one-day career was, by his own exalted standards, rather ordinary. Tendulkar was superb, often supreme, in the first innings of a Test, but he was not entirely to be relied upon in the fourth innings, or even when batting second in the 50-overs game. Besides, being captain made Tendulkar nervous and insecure in his strokeplay. On the other hand, captaincy only reinforces Kohli's innate confidence, and of course, he is absolutely brilliant while chasing.
"No one in the entire history of the game in India has quite had Kohli's combination of cricketing greatness, personal charisma, and this extraordinary drive and ambition to win for himself and his team"
I have met Kohli only once, and am unlikely to ever meet him again. But from our single conversation, and from what I have seen of him otherwise, I would say that of all of India's great sportsmen past and present, he is the most charismatic. He is a man of a manifest intelligence (not merely cricketing) and of absolute self-assurance. Gavaskar and Dravid were as articulate as Kohli in speech, but without his charisma. Kapil and Dhoni had equally strong personalities but lacked Kohli's command of words.
I was witness to the reach and range of Kohli's dominating self in my four months in the BCCI's Committee of Administrators. The board's officials worshipped him even more than the Indian cabinet worships Narendra Modi. They deferred to him absolutely, even in matters like the Future Tours Programme or the management of the National Cricket Academy, which were not within the Indian captain's ken.
In any field in India - whether it be politics or business or academia or sport - when strength of character is combined with solidity of achievement, it leads to an individual's dominance over the institution. And the fact is that, on and off the field, Kohli is truly impressive. No one in the entire history of the game in our country has quite had his combination of cricketing greatness, personal charisma, and this extraordinary drive and ambition to win for himself and his team. The only person who came close, even remotely close, is (or was) Anil Kumble.
Kumble was, by some distance, the greatest bowler produced by India. He was a superb thinker on the game. Moreover, he was well educated, well read, and had an interest in society and politics. And he was not lacking in an awareness of his own importance, although he carried his self-belief in a Kannadiga rather than Punjabi fashion.
It may be that Kumble alone is in the Kohli league as a cricketer and character. That perhaps is why they clashed and perhaps why Kumble had to go.
But why was he replaced by someone so strikingly inferior, in character and cricketing achievement, to the team's captain? A person with no coaching experience besides? Only because, like the BCCI, the chairman of the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators surrendered his liberties and his independence when confronted by the force of Kohli's personality. As did the so-called Cricket Selection Committee. Ravi Shastri was chosen over Tom Moody (and other contenders) because Vinod Rai, Tendulkar, Sourav Gangulyand VVS Laxman were intimidated by the Indian captain into subordinating the institution to the individual. The unwisdom of that decision was masked when India played at home, against weak opposition, but it can no longer be concealed.
Had the BCCI thought more about cricket than commerce, we would not have had to go into this series against South Africa without a single practice match. Had the selectors been wiser or braver, India might not have been 2-0 down now.
Some Kohli bhakts will complain at the timing of this article, written after the Indian captain played such a stupendous innings himself. But this precisely is the time to remind ourselves of how we must not allow individual greatness to shade into institutional hubris. Kohli did all he could to keep India in the game, but the power of an individual in a team game can go only so far. Had Ajinkya Rahane played both Tests, had Bhuvneshwar Kumar played this Test, had India gone two weeks earlier to South Africa instead of playing gully cricket at home with the Sri Lankans, the result might have been quite different.
The BCCI and their cheerleaders brag about India being the centre of world cricket. This may be true in monetary terms, but decidedly not in sporting terms. From my own stint in the BCCI, I reached this melancholy conclusion: that were the game better administered in India, the Indian team would never lose a series. There are ten times as many cricket-crazy Indians as there are football-mad Brazilians. The BCCI has huge cash reserves. With this demographic and financial base, India should always and perennially have been the top team in all formats of the game. If India still lost matches and series, if India still hadn't, in 70 years of trying, won a Test series in Australia (a country with about as many people as Greater Mumbai), then surely the fault lay with how the game was mismanaged in the country.
To the corruption and cronyism that has so long bedevilled Indian cricket has recently been added a third ailment: the superstar syndrome. Kohli is a great player, a great leader, but in the absence of institutional checks and balances, his team will never achieve the greatness he and his fans desire.
When, in the 1970s, India won their first Test series in the West Indies and in England, Vijay Merchant was chairman of selectors. When much later, India began winning series regularly at home, the likes of Gundappa Viswanath and Dilip Vengsarkar were chairmen of selectors. Their cricketing achievements were as substantial as that of the existing players. They had the sense to consult the captain on team selection, but also had the stature to assert their own preferences over his when required. On the other hand, the present set of selectors have all played a handful of Tests apiece. The coach, Shastri, played more, but he was never a true great, and his deference to the captain is in any case obvious.
In Indian cricket today, the selectors, coaching staff and administrators are all pygmies before Kohli. That must change. The selectors must be cricketers of real achievement (as they once were). If not great cricketers themselves, they must at least have the desire and authority to stand up to the captain. Likewise, the coach must have the wisdom and courage to, when necessary, assert his authority over Kohli's (as when Kumble picked Kuldeep Yadav, a move that decided a Test and series in India's favour). And the administrators must schedule the calendar to maximise India's chances of doing well overseas, rather than with an eye to their egos and purses. (The decision not to have an extended tour of South Africa was partly influenced by the BCCI's animosity towards Cricket South Africa.)
Only when India consistently win Tests and series in South Africa, and only when they do likewise in Australia, can they properly consider themselves world champions in cricket. They have the team, and the leader, to do it. However, the captain's authority and arrogance, so vital and important to his personal success, must be moderated and managed if it is to translate into institutional greatness.
Kohli is still only 29. He will surely lead India in South Africa again and he has more than one tour of Australia ahead of him. Two years ago he secured a firm place in my all-time India XI. My wish, hope and desire is for Kohli to end his career with him also being the captain of my XI.
Sunday, 25 June 2017
What the Kohli-Kumble saga tells us
Ian Chappell in Cricinfo
Pakistan soundly beat India in the Champions Trophy final, and it has been interesting, to say the least, to witness the aftermath.
Firstly, the Indian coach, Anil Kumble, resigned. Then the Pakistan players - not surprisingly - were welcomed home as heroes. This was followed by an ICC announcement that Afghanistan and Ireland have been added to the list of Test-playing nations, increasing the number to 12.
Kumble's resignation was no great surprise, as he's a strong-minded individual and the deteriorating relationship between him and the captain, Virat Kohli, had reached the stage of being a distraction. Kumble's character is relevant to any discussion about India's future coaching appointments. The captain is the only person who can run an international cricket team properly, because so much of the job involves on-field decision making. Also, a good part of the leadership role - performed off the field - has to be handled by the captain, as it helps him earn the players' respect, which is crucial to his success.
Consequently a captain has to be a strong-minded individual and decisive in his thought process. To put someone of a similar mindset in a position where he's advising the captain is inviting confrontation.
The captain's best advisors are his vice-captain, a clear-thinking wicketkeeper, and one or two senior players. They are out on the field and can best judge the mood of the game and what advice should be offered to the captain and when.
The best off-field assistance for a captain will come from a good managerial type. Someone who can attend to duties that are not necessarily related to winning or losing cricket matches, but done efficiently, can contribute to the success of the team.
The last thing a captain needs is to come off the field and have someone second-guess his decisions. He also doesn't need a strong-minded individual (outside his advisory group) getting too involved in the pre-match tactical planning. Too often I see captaincy that appears to be the result of the previous evening's planning, and despite ample evidence that it's hindering the team's chances of victory, it remains the plan throughout the day.
This is generally a sure sign that the captain is following someone else's plan and that he, the captain, is the wrong man for the job.
India is fortunate to have two capable leaders in Kohli and the man who stood in for him during the Test series with Australia, Ajinkya Rahane.
It's Kohli's job as captain to concentrate on things that help win or lose cricket matches, and his off-field assistants' task is to ensure he is not distracted in trying to achieve victory.
India's opponents in the final, Pakistan, were unusually free of any controversies during the tournament. They were capably led by Sarfraz Ahmed, who appeared to become more and more his own man as the tournament progressed.
Pakistan soundly beat India in the Champions Trophy final, and it has been interesting, to say the least, to witness the aftermath.
Firstly, the Indian coach, Anil Kumble, resigned. Then the Pakistan players - not surprisingly - were welcomed home as heroes. This was followed by an ICC announcement that Afghanistan and Ireland have been added to the list of Test-playing nations, increasing the number to 12.
Kumble's resignation was no great surprise, as he's a strong-minded individual and the deteriorating relationship between him and the captain, Virat Kohli, had reached the stage of being a distraction. Kumble's character is relevant to any discussion about India's future coaching appointments. The captain is the only person who can run an international cricket team properly, because so much of the job involves on-field decision making. Also, a good part of the leadership role - performed off the field - has to be handled by the captain, as it helps him earn the players' respect, which is crucial to his success.
Consequently a captain has to be a strong-minded individual and decisive in his thought process. To put someone of a similar mindset in a position where he's advising the captain is inviting confrontation.
The captain's best advisors are his vice-captain, a clear-thinking wicketkeeper, and one or two senior players. They are out on the field and can best judge the mood of the game and what advice should be offered to the captain and when.
The best off-field assistance for a captain will come from a good managerial type. Someone who can attend to duties that are not necessarily related to winning or losing cricket matches, but done efficiently, can contribute to the success of the team.
The last thing a captain needs is to come off the field and have someone second-guess his decisions. He also doesn't need a strong-minded individual (outside his advisory group) getting too involved in the pre-match tactical planning. Too often I see captaincy that appears to be the result of the previous evening's planning, and despite ample evidence that it's hindering the team's chances of victory, it remains the plan throughout the day.
This is generally a sure sign that the captain is following someone else's plan and that he, the captain, is the wrong man for the job.
India is fortunate to have two capable leaders in Kohli and the man who stood in for him during the Test series with Australia, Ajinkya Rahane.
It's Kohli's job as captain to concentrate on things that help win or lose cricket matches, and his off-field assistants' task is to ensure he is not distracted in trying to achieve victory.
India's opponents in the final, Pakistan, were unusually free of any controversies during the tournament. They were capably led by Sarfraz Ahmed, who appeared to become more and more his own man as the tournament progressed.
Thursday, 13 April 2017
Why are most captains inevitably batsmen?
Rob Steen in Cricinfo
James Anderson: one of many who have questioned why more fast bowlers aren't considered for captaincy © Getty Images
James Anderson has nothing to prove to anyone but, one assumes, himself. Nor is he one to mince words. So when he expresses disappointment at not having been considered for the England Test captaincy, then says he doesn't know why more fast bowlers aren't entrusted with leadership, and leaves the question hanging in the air, the point is worth considering. What possible reason can there be to maintain the lazy, prejudiced, time-dishonoured view that batsmen should be the default choice as coin-tossers?
Naturally, the record books tell their own flagrantly biased story: of the 57 men to have captained in 25 or more Tests, 46 have been batsmen first and foremost (including 15 of the 16 who have done so on 50-plus occasions, the exception being MS Dhoni). Even if we include two top-notch allrounders, Imran Khan and Garry Sobers, the number of seam bowlers runs to just six: Imran (48 Tests), Sobers (39), Kapil Dev (34), Darren Sammy (30), Shaun Pollock (26) and Wasim Akram (25). Still, that's twice as many representatives in the chart as the spin fraternity can muster - Daniel Vettori (32), Ray Illingworth (31) and Richie Benaud (28) - never mind the stumpers, who contribute only Dhoni (60) and Mushfiqur Rahim (30). As for those who would classify him as a spinner, Sobers is remembered better by this column for his left-arm swing than his spin, so let's indulge it.
It gets worse. Late last year the Cricketer magazine asked readers to vote for their favourite England captain; of the 23 candidates proffered, only Illingworth did not count run-making as his primary occupation. It's all a matter of class, of course. Back when such distinctions were made, the amateurs were almost invariably batsmen, cravat-wearing types accustomed to being served hittable offerings by lowly, gnarly professionals; chaps to whom authority was a birthright. "In England," noted Mike Brearley in his definitive The Art of Captaincy, a revised edition of which is due out this summer, "charisma and leadership have traditionally been associated with the upper class; with that social strata that gives its members what Kingsley Amis called 'the voice accustomed to command'."
If Anderson is "all for bowlers being captains", Don Bradman offered the counter-argument in The Art of Cricket, reasoning that they would lack objectivity about their own workload. "They tend either to over-bowl themselves or not to bowl enough," reinforced Brearley, "from conceit, modesty or indeed self-protection." On the other hand, he continued, two of the best postwar captains in his view were Benaud and Illingworth, outliers both.
It's all a matter of class, of course. Back when such distinctions were made, the amateurs were almost invariably batsmen, cravat-wearing types accustomed to being served hittable offerings by lowly, gnarly professionals
In his 1980 book Captaincy, Illingworth argued that the allrounder, and especially those who were also twirlers like himself and Benaud, were the best equipped for the job. He also took issue with Bradman in his autobiography Yorkshire and Back:
"Basically, I felt my two strongest points were, first, after playing for quite a time I knew batsmen pretty well and I knew their temperaments so I thought I set good fields; and second, I think I was able to get the best out of people because they trusted me. I knew when to attack and when to defend, which governed field placing, and my handling of the bowling."
Video has aided such knowledge, granted, but there's no substitute for a bowler's instinct.
Benaud also rated Illingworth high above the herd. In his 1984 book, Benaud of Reflection he wrote:
"He was a deep thinker on the game, without having any of the theories which sometimes produce woolly thinking from captains. He was a shrewd psychologist and one who left his team in no doubt as to what he required of them. Above all, though, he made his decisions before the critical moment. It was never a case of thinking for an over or two about whether or not a move should be made. If he had a hunch it would work, and if it seemed remotely within the carefully laid-down plans of the series, then he would do it."
What counted above all, felt Illingworth, under whose charge England enjoyed most of their record 26-match unbeaten run between 1969 and 1971, was honesty. During the summer of 1970, opener Brian Luckhurst asked him, somewhat tentatively, whether he had any chance of being picked for that winter's Ashes tour, having made a fair few runs in the first three Tests of the series against a powerful Rest of the World attack. "You're almost on the boat now," replied Illy. "Now what I liked about that," he recollected, "was that Brian had only played three matches with me, and yet he felt that not only could he ask a question, but he was reasonably sure he'd get an honest answer."
Ah, but what if the truth had been, in the captain's view, that Luckhurst was nowhere near the boat? "I wouldn't have told him, 'You've no bloody chance.' I like to think it is possible to be less brutal than that while being sincere, but I would have told him straight that his chances were slim, or even less than that."
Ray Illingworth (right): "I felt my two strongest points were, first, after playing for quite a time, I knew batsmen pretty well, so I thought I set good fields; and second, I think I was able to get the best out of people" © PA Photos
So, knowledge of batsmen, intelligence, psychological insight and honesty: all assets that Anderson possesses, and has employed in support of his captains. Unlike most fast bowlers, moreover, he fields in the slips - one of the better vantage points, if perhaps overrated. He says he enjoyed leading Lancashire on a pre-season tour but acknowledges that, as a fast bowler of advanced age, promoting him now would have made little sense. And yes, if we're brutally honest, had the vacancy arisen, say, three years ago, it is questionable whether he could have been relied upon to control the flashes of temper that have occasionally plunged him into hot water.
Brearley, for his part, contended that a fast bowler should only ever be made captain as a last resort. "It takes an exceptional character to know when to bowl, to keep bowling with all his energy screwed up into a ball of aggression, and to be sensitive to the needs of the team, both tactically and psychologically. [Bob] Willis in particular always shut himself up into a cocoon of concentration and fury for his bowling." The exception, he allowed, was Mike Procter. "Vintcent van der Bijl, who played under Procter for Natal, speaks of his ability to develop each player's natural game and of the enthusiasm that he brought to every match."
Benaud disagreed with Brearley, hailing Keith Miller, a fast bowling allrounder, as the best captain he played under. "No one under whom I played sized up a situation more quickly and no one was better at summing up a batsman's weaknesses," Benaud wrote. "He had to do this for himself when he was bowling and it was second nature for him to do so as captain."
Unaccountably to many, while his tenure as New South Wales captain kicked off a run of nine consecutive Sheffield Shield titles, the nearest Miller came to leading his country was when he took over from the injured Ian Johnson for the first Test of the 1954-55 Caribbean tour in Jamaica, which saw him handle his attack astutely over both West Indies innings, score a century and grab five wickets.
Brearley, for his part, contended that a fast bowler should only ever be made captain as a last resort
Naturally, it is pure conjecture as to whether Australia would have fared better under him on the 1956 Ashes tour - Johnson, a so-so offspinner but the establishment man, was again preferred. There seems to be no better explanation for Miller being passed over than that the selectors were fearful that, as a free spirit and renowned party animal in an image-obsessed trade, he might project the wrong one. "I never seriously thought I would be the captain," Miller would reflect. "I'm impulsive; what's more, I've never been Bradman's pin-up." Nearly half a century later, Shane Warne suffered similarly.
Anderson's main thrust, nonetheless, was about bowlers in general. So, is it fair to say that selectors and committees are still blinded by tradition? Not remotely as much as they were. That two-thirds of the longest-reigning Test bowler-captains (and both wicketkeeper-captains) have assumed charge in the post-Packer age seems far from coincidental.
As Tests have proliferated and media scrutiny has soared, so appointing the right man has never been more important; shelving reservations based on ritual has become equally crucial, as evinced most recently by the appointments of Rangana Herath (Sri Lanka), Jason Holder (West Indies) and Graeme Cremer (Zimbabwe) - one of whom, Holder, is a remarkably young fast bowler, albeit not a furiously aggressive specimen. Nevertheless, at a time when central contracts have placed pre-international captaincy experience at an ever-scarcer premium, this open-mindedness, such as it is, must gain pace.
Whatever the future may bring, there is only one certainty: there will never be another Brearley, another accomplished strategist, deep thinker and wise leader of men otherwise unworthy of his place. All the more reason, then, for that revised version of The Art of Captaincy to be mandatory bedtime reading for Joe Root.
James Anderson: one of many who have questioned why more fast bowlers aren't considered for captaincy © Getty ImagesJames Anderson has nothing to prove to anyone but, one assumes, himself. Nor is he one to mince words. So when he expresses disappointment at not having been considered for the England Test captaincy, then says he doesn't know why more fast bowlers aren't entrusted with leadership, and leaves the question hanging in the air, the point is worth considering. What possible reason can there be to maintain the lazy, prejudiced, time-dishonoured view that batsmen should be the default choice as coin-tossers?
Naturally, the record books tell their own flagrantly biased story: of the 57 men to have captained in 25 or more Tests, 46 have been batsmen first and foremost (including 15 of the 16 who have done so on 50-plus occasions, the exception being MS Dhoni). Even if we include two top-notch allrounders, Imran Khan and Garry Sobers, the number of seam bowlers runs to just six: Imran (48 Tests), Sobers (39), Kapil Dev (34), Darren Sammy (30), Shaun Pollock (26) and Wasim Akram (25). Still, that's twice as many representatives in the chart as the spin fraternity can muster - Daniel Vettori (32), Ray Illingworth (31) and Richie Benaud (28) - never mind the stumpers, who contribute only Dhoni (60) and Mushfiqur Rahim (30). As for those who would classify him as a spinner, Sobers is remembered better by this column for his left-arm swing than his spin, so let's indulge it.
It gets worse. Late last year the Cricketer magazine asked readers to vote for their favourite England captain; of the 23 candidates proffered, only Illingworth did not count run-making as his primary occupation. It's all a matter of class, of course. Back when such distinctions were made, the amateurs were almost invariably batsmen, cravat-wearing types accustomed to being served hittable offerings by lowly, gnarly professionals; chaps to whom authority was a birthright. "In England," noted Mike Brearley in his definitive The Art of Captaincy, a revised edition of which is due out this summer, "charisma and leadership have traditionally been associated with the upper class; with that social strata that gives its members what Kingsley Amis called 'the voice accustomed to command'."
If Anderson is "all for bowlers being captains", Don Bradman offered the counter-argument in The Art of Cricket, reasoning that they would lack objectivity about their own workload. "They tend either to over-bowl themselves or not to bowl enough," reinforced Brearley, "from conceit, modesty or indeed self-protection." On the other hand, he continued, two of the best postwar captains in his view were Benaud and Illingworth, outliers both.
It's all a matter of class, of course. Back when such distinctions were made, the amateurs were almost invariably batsmen, cravat-wearing types accustomed to being served hittable offerings by lowly, gnarly professionals
In his 1980 book Captaincy, Illingworth argued that the allrounder, and especially those who were also twirlers like himself and Benaud, were the best equipped for the job. He also took issue with Bradman in his autobiography Yorkshire and Back:
"Basically, I felt my two strongest points were, first, after playing for quite a time I knew batsmen pretty well and I knew their temperaments so I thought I set good fields; and second, I think I was able to get the best out of people because they trusted me. I knew when to attack and when to defend, which governed field placing, and my handling of the bowling."
Video has aided such knowledge, granted, but there's no substitute for a bowler's instinct.
Benaud also rated Illingworth high above the herd. In his 1984 book, Benaud of Reflection he wrote:
"He was a deep thinker on the game, without having any of the theories which sometimes produce woolly thinking from captains. He was a shrewd psychologist and one who left his team in no doubt as to what he required of them. Above all, though, he made his decisions before the critical moment. It was never a case of thinking for an over or two about whether or not a move should be made. If he had a hunch it would work, and if it seemed remotely within the carefully laid-down plans of the series, then he would do it."
What counted above all, felt Illingworth, under whose charge England enjoyed most of their record 26-match unbeaten run between 1969 and 1971, was honesty. During the summer of 1970, opener Brian Luckhurst asked him, somewhat tentatively, whether he had any chance of being picked for that winter's Ashes tour, having made a fair few runs in the first three Tests of the series against a powerful Rest of the World attack. "You're almost on the boat now," replied Illy. "Now what I liked about that," he recollected, "was that Brian had only played three matches with me, and yet he felt that not only could he ask a question, but he was reasonably sure he'd get an honest answer."
Ah, but what if the truth had been, in the captain's view, that Luckhurst was nowhere near the boat? "I wouldn't have told him, 'You've no bloody chance.' I like to think it is possible to be less brutal than that while being sincere, but I would have told him straight that his chances were slim, or even less than that."
Ray Illingworth (right): "I felt my two strongest points were, first, after playing for quite a time, I knew batsmen pretty well, so I thought I set good fields; and second, I think I was able to get the best out of people" © PA PhotosSo, knowledge of batsmen, intelligence, psychological insight and honesty: all assets that Anderson possesses, and has employed in support of his captains. Unlike most fast bowlers, moreover, he fields in the slips - one of the better vantage points, if perhaps overrated. He says he enjoyed leading Lancashire on a pre-season tour but acknowledges that, as a fast bowler of advanced age, promoting him now would have made little sense. And yes, if we're brutally honest, had the vacancy arisen, say, three years ago, it is questionable whether he could have been relied upon to control the flashes of temper that have occasionally plunged him into hot water.
Brearley, for his part, contended that a fast bowler should only ever be made captain as a last resort. "It takes an exceptional character to know when to bowl, to keep bowling with all his energy screwed up into a ball of aggression, and to be sensitive to the needs of the team, both tactically and psychologically. [Bob] Willis in particular always shut himself up into a cocoon of concentration and fury for his bowling." The exception, he allowed, was Mike Procter. "Vintcent van der Bijl, who played under Procter for Natal, speaks of his ability to develop each player's natural game and of the enthusiasm that he brought to every match."
Benaud disagreed with Brearley, hailing Keith Miller, a fast bowling allrounder, as the best captain he played under. "No one under whom I played sized up a situation more quickly and no one was better at summing up a batsman's weaknesses," Benaud wrote. "He had to do this for himself when he was bowling and it was second nature for him to do so as captain."
Unaccountably to many, while his tenure as New South Wales captain kicked off a run of nine consecutive Sheffield Shield titles, the nearest Miller came to leading his country was when he took over from the injured Ian Johnson for the first Test of the 1954-55 Caribbean tour in Jamaica, which saw him handle his attack astutely over both West Indies innings, score a century and grab five wickets.
Brearley, for his part, contended that a fast bowler should only ever be made captain as a last resort
Naturally, it is pure conjecture as to whether Australia would have fared better under him on the 1956 Ashes tour - Johnson, a so-so offspinner but the establishment man, was again preferred. There seems to be no better explanation for Miller being passed over than that the selectors were fearful that, as a free spirit and renowned party animal in an image-obsessed trade, he might project the wrong one. "I never seriously thought I would be the captain," Miller would reflect. "I'm impulsive; what's more, I've never been Bradman's pin-up." Nearly half a century later, Shane Warne suffered similarly.
Anderson's main thrust, nonetheless, was about bowlers in general. So, is it fair to say that selectors and committees are still blinded by tradition? Not remotely as much as they were. That two-thirds of the longest-reigning Test bowler-captains (and both wicketkeeper-captains) have assumed charge in the post-Packer age seems far from coincidental.
As Tests have proliferated and media scrutiny has soared, so appointing the right man has never been more important; shelving reservations based on ritual has become equally crucial, as evinced most recently by the appointments of Rangana Herath (Sri Lanka), Jason Holder (West Indies) and Graeme Cremer (Zimbabwe) - one of whom, Holder, is a remarkably young fast bowler, albeit not a furiously aggressive specimen. Nevertheless, at a time when central contracts have placed pre-international captaincy experience at an ever-scarcer premium, this open-mindedness, such as it is, must gain pace.
Whatever the future may bring, there is only one certainty: there will never be another Brearley, another accomplished strategist, deep thinker and wise leader of men otherwise unworthy of his place. All the more reason, then, for that revised version of The Art of Captaincy to be mandatory bedtime reading for Joe Root.
Monday, 20 February 2017
Cricket Captains aren't that important anymore. Same for high paid Business Leaders
Tim Wigmore in Cricinfo
It has been a seminal fortnight for the England cricket team. The country has a new Test match captain, and Joe Root's appointment could herald obvious changes to the team's approach, on and off the field. Yet whether the change of captaincy will have any positive or negative effect on results is an altogether different matter.
How much does individual leadership really matter? It's a question valid in cricket, sport and beyond.
"Being in charge isn't what it used to be," writes Moisés Naím in The End of Power. He shows how, for all the focus on the figureheads of teams, the powers of leaders are being eroded, in everything from business to politics and the military. "In the 21st century, power is easier to get, harder to use - and easier to lose," Naím says, arguing that, because of the digital revolution, the collapse of deference, and increased accountability within organisations, the powerful now face more limitations on their power than ever before. In the second half of the 20th century, weaker sides (in terms of soldiers and weapons) achieved their strategic goals in the majority of wars. The tenures of chief executives are becoming shorter, and those in charge also face more internal constraints on their power than ever before.
The most successful leaders have never been more venerated: the leadership-coaching industry is worth an estimated US$50 billion every year, brimming with corporate bigwigs attempting to learn the "lessons" of other leaders' success. Yet there is no real evidence of the enduring superstar qualities of those who cash in. Award-winning chief executives subsequently underperform, both against their own performance and against non-prize-winning CEOs, as research by Ulrike Malmendier and Geoffrey Tate shows. A lot of the lauded CEOs' previous success, in other words, might have been simply luck, and their subsequent underperformance regression to the mean.
The obsession with leadership extends to sport, yet leaders' power is being reduced here also. "In early-modern sports - the late 19th century - there was little or no coaching and hence the captain on the field had a significant leadership role to play," explains the sports economist and historian Stefan Szymanski. "As sport became more organised and coaching strategy developed, the role of the captain on the field diminished."
Compared with other sports, cricket is unusual in giving as much power to the captain as it does. Yet the cricket captain has not been immune to the wider erosion in the importance of leadership across sport. "The role is declining as the potential of coaches to add analytical support based on data analysis has increased," Szymanski says.
It is instructive to compare the responsibility of Mike Brearley to that of Root today. While Root will be supported by a coterie of coaches, physiologists and analysts, Brearley operated before the modern coach, and had to oversee warming up and stretching before each day. In the days of amateurism, captains even had to motivate amateurs to play at all. Today the captain is far more important in club cricket, where they have no coaches to aid them and often face an arduous task to even get a full team together, than in the professional game.
The power of individual coaches has also been diminished, because the responsibilities that were once the preserve of one man are now divided up among a multitude of personnel. In international cricket teams today, what were, 25 years ago, the sole functions of the coach are now divided up among what often amounts to a 2nd XI of support staff.
While the narrative of football's Premier League now revolves around managers, each result explored through the prism of their success or failure, perhaps they have never mattered less. In the 1930s, Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman not merely coached innovatively but led Arsenal to introduce numbered shirts, and build floodlights and a new stand. Unless they are named Arsene Wenger, the average Premier League manager now lasts a year in the job. Given the complexities of modern sport, there is a limit to what they can do. Indeed, studies of poorly performing clubs find that performances improve by an almost identical amount whether or not a new manager is appointed. The new boss, then, is rarely much better or worse than the old boss.
The book Soccernomics finds a 90% correlation between wage bills and league finishes over a ten-year period; just 10% of top-flight managers consistently overachieve when wages are factored into account. So, brilliant leadership can make a difference, but only in exceptional cases. It was not merely modesty that led Yogi Berra, when asked what made a great baseball coach, to reply: "A great ball team."
Joe Root will enjoy the services of several coaches, analysts and managers in his role as England's Test captain, thereby diffusing his leadership responsibilities © Getty Images
The captain in golf's Ryder Cup has a job akin to the coach in other sports. It offers a prime example of how narratives are constructed around the leader, assigning them more power than they really have. In The Captain Myth, Richard Gillis explores how victories or defeats are retrospectively explained through a captain's mistakes or shrewd decisions. Every match must consist of a Good Captain and Bad Captain, and the Good Captain is always the victor. The trouble with this simplistic narrative is that, as Paul Azinger, who led the US to victory in the 2008 Ryder Cup, reflects, "There have been some captains who have micro-managed everything and lost. There have been captains who were drunk every night and won. There is no blueprint on winning."
There is a paradox to leadership in modern sport. Leaders have never faced more scrutiny - but most have never had less power. Professionalism and the explosion of money in sport means that decisions once the sole preserve of a captain or head coach are now influenced by dozens of others behind the scenes: specialist coaches, performance analysts who mine data, dieticians, psychologists and those responsible for nurturing academy players. Perhaps the cricket team that has performed most above themselves in recent years is Northamptonshire in the T20 Blast. Reaching three finals in four years has not just been a triumph for Alex Wakely's astute captaincy, but also for the coaching staff, the data analyst, the physio and all those involved in player recruitment.
The reluctance to recognise the limits of leadership has deep roots. We are a storytelling species. People make for much better stories than underlying, impersonal factors; Soccernomics shows that success in international football can broadly be explained by three factors - population size, GDP, and experience playing the sport - that have nothing to do with leadership. In The Captain Myth, Gillis writes that, because of psychological biases "meshed with our obsession with celebrity, it's easy to understand how the captain has become such a prominent figure in the sports world". In cricket, he tells me that "the decisions of the captain can be significant, but the relationship between the decisions and the outcome is not linear, it's far messier than that, and makes a far less enjoyable tale".
As much as coaches and fans crave inspirational leadership, in modern sport, with huge and complex professional structures to manage, perhaps it is easier for a single leader to make a negative difference than a positive one. "Good captaincy and coaching have far less of an impact on outcomes than bad captaincy and coaching does," believes Trent Woodhill, a leading T20 coach. Bad leadership can marginalise and disempower the backroom team, effectively preventing support staff from doing their jobs properly. Beyond sport, Naím believes that we are in an age of "heightened vulnerability to bad ideas and bad leaders". The analysis extends beyond sport. Disruptive technology has not only changed the nature of power, Naím believes, but also led to an age of "heightened vulnerability to bad ideas and bad leaders".
Root has captained in just four first-class games, yet this is in keeping with modern norms. That Virat Kohli, Steven Smith and Kane Williamson have all been successful after their appointments as captain, despite a derisory amount of prior leadership experience in professional sport, suggests that captaincy experience - and, by implication, captaincy skill - is simply not that important. The absence of specialist captains, at both domestic and international level, also reflects a recognition of the limits of what a skipper can achieve.
"Playing in the middle and understanding the demands is more important than captaincy," Andrew Strauss said when Root was unveiled. The greatest potential boon of a Root captaincy lies not in a new culture he might create, or more enterprising leadership, but the possibility of greater run-scoring: if Alastair Cook is reinvigorated without the leadership, while, in keeping with recent England captains, Root's own batting initially enjoys an upswing.
Leadership is not irrelevant. Occasionally cricketers are particularly suited to a leadership role - Brearley, Graeme Smith, or Misbah-ul-Haq, say; some, like Kevin Pietersen, might be the opposite. But the overwhelming majority of captains are bunched in the middle - and, in any case, a captain's ability to do good is marginal, now more than ever. For all the tendency to focus on a team's figurehead, great leadership is a collective endeavour, and operates against wider limitations. Perhaps this is why Strauss is so unperturbed by Root's lack of captaincy experience. Only rarely does the identity of a captain really matter.
It has been a seminal fortnight for the England cricket team. The country has a new Test match captain, and Joe Root's appointment could herald obvious changes to the team's approach, on and off the field. Yet whether the change of captaincy will have any positive or negative effect on results is an altogether different matter.
How much does individual leadership really matter? It's a question valid in cricket, sport and beyond.
"Being in charge isn't what it used to be," writes Moisés Naím in The End of Power. He shows how, for all the focus on the figureheads of teams, the powers of leaders are being eroded, in everything from business to politics and the military. "In the 21st century, power is easier to get, harder to use - and easier to lose," Naím says, arguing that, because of the digital revolution, the collapse of deference, and increased accountability within organisations, the powerful now face more limitations on their power than ever before. In the second half of the 20th century, weaker sides (in terms of soldiers and weapons) achieved their strategic goals in the majority of wars. The tenures of chief executives are becoming shorter, and those in charge also face more internal constraints on their power than ever before.
The most successful leaders have never been more venerated: the leadership-coaching industry is worth an estimated US$50 billion every year, brimming with corporate bigwigs attempting to learn the "lessons" of other leaders' success. Yet there is no real evidence of the enduring superstar qualities of those who cash in. Award-winning chief executives subsequently underperform, both against their own performance and against non-prize-winning CEOs, as research by Ulrike Malmendier and Geoffrey Tate shows. A lot of the lauded CEOs' previous success, in other words, might have been simply luck, and their subsequent underperformance regression to the mean.
The obsession with leadership extends to sport, yet leaders' power is being reduced here also. "In early-modern sports - the late 19th century - there was little or no coaching and hence the captain on the field had a significant leadership role to play," explains the sports economist and historian Stefan Szymanski. "As sport became more organised and coaching strategy developed, the role of the captain on the field diminished."
Compared with other sports, cricket is unusual in giving as much power to the captain as it does. Yet the cricket captain has not been immune to the wider erosion in the importance of leadership across sport. "The role is declining as the potential of coaches to add analytical support based on data analysis has increased," Szymanski says.
It is instructive to compare the responsibility of Mike Brearley to that of Root today. While Root will be supported by a coterie of coaches, physiologists and analysts, Brearley operated before the modern coach, and had to oversee warming up and stretching before each day. In the days of amateurism, captains even had to motivate amateurs to play at all. Today the captain is far more important in club cricket, where they have no coaches to aid them and often face an arduous task to even get a full team together, than in the professional game.
The power of individual coaches has also been diminished, because the responsibilities that were once the preserve of one man are now divided up among a multitude of personnel. In international cricket teams today, what were, 25 years ago, the sole functions of the coach are now divided up among what often amounts to a 2nd XI of support staff.
While the narrative of football's Premier League now revolves around managers, each result explored through the prism of their success or failure, perhaps they have never mattered less. In the 1930s, Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman not merely coached innovatively but led Arsenal to introduce numbered shirts, and build floodlights and a new stand. Unless they are named Arsene Wenger, the average Premier League manager now lasts a year in the job. Given the complexities of modern sport, there is a limit to what they can do. Indeed, studies of poorly performing clubs find that performances improve by an almost identical amount whether or not a new manager is appointed. The new boss, then, is rarely much better or worse than the old boss.
The book Soccernomics finds a 90% correlation between wage bills and league finishes over a ten-year period; just 10% of top-flight managers consistently overachieve when wages are factored into account. So, brilliant leadership can make a difference, but only in exceptional cases. It was not merely modesty that led Yogi Berra, when asked what made a great baseball coach, to reply: "A great ball team."
Joe Root will enjoy the services of several coaches, analysts and managers in his role as England's Test captain, thereby diffusing his leadership responsibilities © Getty ImagesThe captain in golf's Ryder Cup has a job akin to the coach in other sports. It offers a prime example of how narratives are constructed around the leader, assigning them more power than they really have. In The Captain Myth, Richard Gillis explores how victories or defeats are retrospectively explained through a captain's mistakes or shrewd decisions. Every match must consist of a Good Captain and Bad Captain, and the Good Captain is always the victor. The trouble with this simplistic narrative is that, as Paul Azinger, who led the US to victory in the 2008 Ryder Cup, reflects, "There have been some captains who have micro-managed everything and lost. There have been captains who were drunk every night and won. There is no blueprint on winning."
There is a paradox to leadership in modern sport. Leaders have never faced more scrutiny - but most have never had less power. Professionalism and the explosion of money in sport means that decisions once the sole preserve of a captain or head coach are now influenced by dozens of others behind the scenes: specialist coaches, performance analysts who mine data, dieticians, psychologists and those responsible for nurturing academy players. Perhaps the cricket team that has performed most above themselves in recent years is Northamptonshire in the T20 Blast. Reaching three finals in four years has not just been a triumph for Alex Wakely's astute captaincy, but also for the coaching staff, the data analyst, the physio and all those involved in player recruitment.
The reluctance to recognise the limits of leadership has deep roots. We are a storytelling species. People make for much better stories than underlying, impersonal factors; Soccernomics shows that success in international football can broadly be explained by three factors - population size, GDP, and experience playing the sport - that have nothing to do with leadership. In The Captain Myth, Gillis writes that, because of psychological biases "meshed with our obsession with celebrity, it's easy to understand how the captain has become such a prominent figure in the sports world". In cricket, he tells me that "the decisions of the captain can be significant, but the relationship between the decisions and the outcome is not linear, it's far messier than that, and makes a far less enjoyable tale".
As much as coaches and fans crave inspirational leadership, in modern sport, with huge and complex professional structures to manage, perhaps it is easier for a single leader to make a negative difference than a positive one. "Good captaincy and coaching have far less of an impact on outcomes than bad captaincy and coaching does," believes Trent Woodhill, a leading T20 coach. Bad leadership can marginalise and disempower the backroom team, effectively preventing support staff from doing their jobs properly. Beyond sport, Naím believes that we are in an age of "heightened vulnerability to bad ideas and bad leaders". The analysis extends beyond sport. Disruptive technology has not only changed the nature of power, Naím believes, but also led to an age of "heightened vulnerability to bad ideas and bad leaders".
Root has captained in just four first-class games, yet this is in keeping with modern norms. That Virat Kohli, Steven Smith and Kane Williamson have all been successful after their appointments as captain, despite a derisory amount of prior leadership experience in professional sport, suggests that captaincy experience - and, by implication, captaincy skill - is simply not that important. The absence of specialist captains, at both domestic and international level, also reflects a recognition of the limits of what a skipper can achieve.
"Playing in the middle and understanding the demands is more important than captaincy," Andrew Strauss said when Root was unveiled. The greatest potential boon of a Root captaincy lies not in a new culture he might create, or more enterprising leadership, but the possibility of greater run-scoring: if Alastair Cook is reinvigorated without the leadership, while, in keeping with recent England captains, Root's own batting initially enjoys an upswing.
Leadership is not irrelevant. Occasionally cricketers are particularly suited to a leadership role - Brearley, Graeme Smith, or Misbah-ul-Haq, say; some, like Kevin Pietersen, might be the opposite. But the overwhelming majority of captains are bunched in the middle - and, in any case, a captain's ability to do good is marginal, now more than ever. For all the tendency to focus on a team's figurehead, great leadership is a collective endeavour, and operates against wider limitations. Perhaps this is why Strauss is so unperturbed by Root's lack of captaincy experience. Only rarely does the identity of a captain really matter.
Tuesday, 25 October 2016
How to be a vice-captain
Brad Haddin in Cricinfo
Wind the clock back to March 2013. I'm boarding a flight home from India with Michael Clarke. He's out of the final Test of that series in Delhi with a back flare-up, while I'm travelling home after being the injury replacement for Matthew Wade in Mohali.
Plenty has gone on in the preceding week or so, the "homework"-related suspensions of Shane Watson, Mitchell Johnson, Usman Khawaja and James Pattinson in particular. So we take the opportunity to speak pretty openly about how the team is functioning, and how unhappy everyone is with the way the Indian tour has panned out, in the way some players have been treated and the mood around the team.
For one thing, expectations of behaviour seem to be driven by management rather than players, and that's something that needs to change.
Mickey Arthur is yet to be replaced by Darren Lehmann, but it's an important conversation in terms of how Michael thinks the team should operate in the coming months. It helps too that having been away from the team for a while, I can see things from an angle Michael isn't seeing. One change in the interim is the much more experienced side chosen for the Ashes tour that follows.
While I did not officially hold the title at the time, that's a good example of how a deputy should operate. Vice-captaincy is a low-profile job that's not fully understood by many, but it is vital to helping get a successful team moving in the right direction together. One bedrock of the gig is to have a deputy committed to that role, rather than thinking about being captain himself. That was certainly the case with me.
The other foundation of the job is a relationship with the captain that allows you to speak frankly with him about where the team is going - in private rather than in front of the team. Keeping an ear to the ground and communicating with other players and then relaying that to the leader when necessary. Having gone back a long way with Michael, we had that sort of dynamic.
These conversations should be honest enough to be able to say, "I don't think this is working, and this is how the group is feeling", or "I think you might have missed this". These aren't always the easiest conversations, but they have to happen from a place of mutual respect. The captain can either take note or disregard it, but the main thing is that he knows how things are tracking when he does make his final call on a given issue. That doesn't happen without a healthy relationship between captain and deputy.
Overall, the role of the vice-captain is to complement what the captain does. Your job is to make sure the younger guys are feeling a part of the team and that they understand the standards that you want to set in the group and that your behaviour is not to be compromised.
You pick up on the little things around the team, like being punctual, wearing the right uniforms and treating people inside and outside the team with respect, and have a quiet word to guys here and there if they need a reminder. That then flows into attention to detail in the middle.
Michael was a very good tactical captain who was always in control on the field. My job, relative to him - and similarly for other senior players - was to make sure the mood of the team was right, and to set standards for the younger guys to follow; to be sure they knew what it meant to be an Australian cricketer. The vice-captain should be the guy to drive that.
Once we got to England in 2013, I took it upon myself to spend time with each player to talk about the brand of cricket we wanted to play and also to make sure guys were talking and reflecting on the game and each other, whether we'd had a good day or a bad day.
We did that after a close loss in the first Test at Trent Bridge and that was a good moment - we weren't retreating into ourselves in defeat. Once again, that flowed well into the success we had later, because guys were talking and enjoying each other's good days, having commiserated through the bad ones.
For a long time in cricket, I think that sort of thing happened pretty organically. But in an era when the game is so professionalised and guys are jetting around playing T20 tournaments when not with Australia or even their domestic teams, it takes thoughtful effort to make sure it still happens. If anything, vice-captaincy has grown in importance for that reason.
I mentioned earlier that one key to the job is not wanting the captaincy. If you look back through the recent history of Australian cricket, the examples are plentiful. Geoff Marsh was a terrific lieutenant to Allan Border, Ian Healy to Mark Taylor, and Adam Gilchrist to Ricky Ponting.
Once we got to England in 2013, I took it upon myself to spend time with each player to talk about the brand of cricket we wanted to play
They are three contrasting characters, but what they had in common was no great desire to be captain. I saw Gilly's work up close as a junior member of the squad, and he was a terrific link man between the leadership and the team. As fellow glovemen, I also saw how the role behind the stumps gave you a great perspective to support the captain.
There have been other times, of course, when the vice-captain is the heir-apparent. That was the case for Taylor, when he was deputy to AB, for Steve Waugh, when he replaced Heals as vice-captain to Taylor, and for Michael, when he was appointed deputy to Ricky after Gilly retired. All those guys will tell you that it put them in awkward positions at times, not knowing whether to intervene in things or not, whether on or off the field.
Similarly, Watson had a difficult time as Michael's deputy because they did not have the same open relationship to discuss things that I was fortunate enough to have. That's something for Cricket Australia to keep in mind whenever it makes these appointments.
Right now, Steven Smith has an able deputy in David Warner. To me, this relationship should work because, like Michael and I, these two have known each other for years. Davey is growing into the role at present, evolving from his former "attack dog" persona into someone more measured. If he ever wants a reminder of how vice-captaincy should or shouldn't work, he needs only to think back to a year like 2013 and the team's contrasting fortunes.
Wind the clock back to March 2013. I'm boarding a flight home from India with Michael Clarke. He's out of the final Test of that series in Delhi with a back flare-up, while I'm travelling home after being the injury replacement for Matthew Wade in Mohali.
Plenty has gone on in the preceding week or so, the "homework"-related suspensions of Shane Watson, Mitchell Johnson, Usman Khawaja and James Pattinson in particular. So we take the opportunity to speak pretty openly about how the team is functioning, and how unhappy everyone is with the way the Indian tour has panned out, in the way some players have been treated and the mood around the team.
For one thing, expectations of behaviour seem to be driven by management rather than players, and that's something that needs to change.
Mickey Arthur is yet to be replaced by Darren Lehmann, but it's an important conversation in terms of how Michael thinks the team should operate in the coming months. It helps too that having been away from the team for a while, I can see things from an angle Michael isn't seeing. One change in the interim is the much more experienced side chosen for the Ashes tour that follows.
While I did not officially hold the title at the time, that's a good example of how a deputy should operate. Vice-captaincy is a low-profile job that's not fully understood by many, but it is vital to helping get a successful team moving in the right direction together. One bedrock of the gig is to have a deputy committed to that role, rather than thinking about being captain himself. That was certainly the case with me.
The other foundation of the job is a relationship with the captain that allows you to speak frankly with him about where the team is going - in private rather than in front of the team. Keeping an ear to the ground and communicating with other players and then relaying that to the leader when necessary. Having gone back a long way with Michael, we had that sort of dynamic.
These conversations should be honest enough to be able to say, "I don't think this is working, and this is how the group is feeling", or "I think you might have missed this". These aren't always the easiest conversations, but they have to happen from a place of mutual respect. The captain can either take note or disregard it, but the main thing is that he knows how things are tracking when he does make his final call on a given issue. That doesn't happen without a healthy relationship between captain and deputy.
Overall, the role of the vice-captain is to complement what the captain does. Your job is to make sure the younger guys are feeling a part of the team and that they understand the standards that you want to set in the group and that your behaviour is not to be compromised.
You pick up on the little things around the team, like being punctual, wearing the right uniforms and treating people inside and outside the team with respect, and have a quiet word to guys here and there if they need a reminder. That then flows into attention to detail in the middle.
Michael was a very good tactical captain who was always in control on the field. My job, relative to him - and similarly for other senior players - was to make sure the mood of the team was right, and to set standards for the younger guys to follow; to be sure they knew what it meant to be an Australian cricketer. The vice-captain should be the guy to drive that.
Once we got to England in 2013, I took it upon myself to spend time with each player to talk about the brand of cricket we wanted to play and also to make sure guys were talking and reflecting on the game and each other, whether we'd had a good day or a bad day.
We did that after a close loss in the first Test at Trent Bridge and that was a good moment - we weren't retreating into ourselves in defeat. Once again, that flowed well into the success we had later, because guys were talking and enjoying each other's good days, having commiserated through the bad ones.
For a long time in cricket, I think that sort of thing happened pretty organically. But in an era when the game is so professionalised and guys are jetting around playing T20 tournaments when not with Australia or even their domestic teams, it takes thoughtful effort to make sure it still happens. If anything, vice-captaincy has grown in importance for that reason.
I mentioned earlier that one key to the job is not wanting the captaincy. If you look back through the recent history of Australian cricket, the examples are plentiful. Geoff Marsh was a terrific lieutenant to Allan Border, Ian Healy to Mark Taylor, and Adam Gilchrist to Ricky Ponting.
Once we got to England in 2013, I took it upon myself to spend time with each player to talk about the brand of cricket we wanted to play
They are three contrasting characters, but what they had in common was no great desire to be captain. I saw Gilly's work up close as a junior member of the squad, and he was a terrific link man between the leadership and the team. As fellow glovemen, I also saw how the role behind the stumps gave you a great perspective to support the captain.
There have been other times, of course, when the vice-captain is the heir-apparent. That was the case for Taylor, when he was deputy to AB, for Steve Waugh, when he replaced Heals as vice-captain to Taylor, and for Michael, when he was appointed deputy to Ricky after Gilly retired. All those guys will tell you that it put them in awkward positions at times, not knowing whether to intervene in things or not, whether on or off the field.
Similarly, Watson had a difficult time as Michael's deputy because they did not have the same open relationship to discuss things that I was fortunate enough to have. That's something for Cricket Australia to keep in mind whenever it makes these appointments.
Right now, Steven Smith has an able deputy in David Warner. To me, this relationship should work because, like Michael and I, these two have known each other for years. Davey is growing into the role at present, evolving from his former "attack dog" persona into someone more measured. If he ever wants a reminder of how vice-captaincy should or shouldn't work, he needs only to think back to a year like 2013 and the team's contrasting fortunes.
Thursday, 7 January 2016
Hashim Amla did the honourable thing by jettisoning his burden
Mike Selvey in The Guardian
It may be unusual to change captains at the midpoint of a series but Hashim Amla has chosen a good moment to concede his position and drop back into the ranks. A resignation after the massive defeat in Durban would have represented capitulation even if he had been contemplating it for a while.
Now though he has done so on the back of a stirring fightback from the side he led, and an emphatic return not so much to form (he had not looked out of touch in the second innings in Durban) as to relentless run-gathering. It is a little too strong to describe the outcome of a Test that had yet to complete its third innings as a “winning draw” for South Africa. With the conditions finally giving the bowlers some lateral movement on the final day, we can only surmise what the England bowlers might have managed had they been defending, say, 200 and their colleagues rediscovered the art of catching but at least we know there will be an almighty scrap now up on the highveld.
Sometimes it is only in the aftermath of such a decision that the extent of the burden is revealed. Those who were there in the dining room at Edgbaston remember the red eyes of Nasser Hussain, that most passionate of England captains. There were Michael Vaughan’s tears at the ECB centre of excellence at Loughborough. Such is the responsibility, beyond simply a job, that comes with captaining one’s country or even just playing. It is only around nine months since Jonathan Trott, a man whose implacable demeanour hid inner turmoil, was lbw in what was to prove his final innings for England. He positively skipped from the field and sprinted up the pavilion steps, a man clearly content it was finally over. So there should be no surprise that in Amla’s case, he conducted a press conference that was a long way from the soul-searching of others and simply that of a man happy in the decision at which he had arrived and itching to get on with the job at which he truly excels.
There is absolutely no question of Amla being coerced into applying for the job in the first place on account of his ethnicity. With Graeme Smith’s retirement, he, as a senior player, put his name forward with others, including AB de Villiers. He did so because he believed he could make a difference, and after due process, was installed. It would also be wrong though to assume that, all things being equal, this was not the choice that would be made, convenient for South African cricket that he had applied.
It would also be erroneous to deduce that after the strong rumours in Durban that things were in some disarray on and off the field that he had been pushed out of the job. There was some fierce external criticism, most prominently from Smith in his role as media pundit, to which the response of Cricket South Africa was to invite him into the camp. But Smith’s remarks, while trenchant, would surely have been taken on board by Amla, a trusted colleague in Smith’s teams: there is a difference between being pushed and being encouraged.
A decade ago, when England were in India, I went to stay with their then coachGreg Chappell, and conducted an interview with him, which in part resonates now with the situation in which Amla found himself. At the time, Chappell had been dividing opinion in the country because of his fractious relationship with the former captain Sourav Ganguly, who had been struggling desperately for batting form with one Test hundred, in Bulawayo, in two-and-a-half years. He had been replaced as the captain by Rahul Dravid and the coach was portrayed as the man who sacked him, which was far from the truth.
“We clashed,” Chappell told me, “because his needs as a struggling player and captain and those of the team were different. I’m not the hard-nosed control freak that I have been portrayed. I’m thorough, a realist, a pragmatist and I’m honest. Much has been written and said, a lot of it misleading, but in essence I told Sourav that if he wanted to save his career he should consider giving up the captaincy. He was just hanging in there. Modest innings were draining him. He had no energy to give to the team, which was helping neither him nor us. It was in his own interest to give himself mind space to work on his batting so that it could be resurrected.”
Here we have in Ganguly and Amla two captains at opposite ends of the spectrum: the one desperate to hang on to his position at all costs; the other understanding his leadership may not be in the best interests either of the side or himself. Serene and understated, Amla had taken over a side who were in inevitable transition after the loss of some of the greatest players the game has seen. So a downturn in performance was not entirely unexpected. But he has nonetheless presided over the longest winless streak, eight matches, in South Africa’s Test history, mitigation coming only in the state of the Bangladesh weather and the pitches in India. Certainly in this, Amla has seen the broader picture.
Where they share a common theme is the impact, as Chappell said of Ganguly, that it was having on his batting and the team. Until his redemptive double hundred in Cape Town, Amla’s previous 13 matches as captain had brought him an average of 40.76 against a career average 10 points or so higher. Since the start of the tour of India that preceded the current series, nine innings had brought him five single figure scores and a top score of 43.
Whether, like Ganguly, his tribulations with the bat were impacting on the team in a manner other than simply the lack of runs is doubtful. If the captaincy itself, and all that it entailed, was affecting the capacity to do the job at which he truly excelled, then Amla is understanding enough to be able to arrive at the conclusion he has. It is an honourable thing to have done, which may well be to the detriment of England. That he has been able to do so on the back of a momentous innings, played perhaps with the release that comes with already having made a decision, merely serves to highlight it.
Thursday, 3 December 2015
'You try to construct an over before you think of how to get a batsman out'
Shane Bond interviewed by Subash Jayaraman
You were able to play only 18 Tests and 82 ODIs for New Zealand. Did you think of cutting back on your pace or shortening your run-up or changing your bowling action to reduce the stress on your body?
No. I had to remodel my action once I had surgery on my back. I spent a lot of time making adjustments. In terms of throttling back: no. In hindsight, perhaps I should have taken more time and dropped my pace a little bit. But I always felt that my success came from going 100% all the time. That was my role in the team. So I tried to prepare the best I could and fulfil that role. Unfortunately, a few injuries came along the way. But that's sport.
Did pride or ego get in the way?
No, I don't think so. My point of difference [from other bowlers] was my pace. If I dropped the pace to be more accurate, I would have fallen back into the pack and would have been competing with every other bowler. My ability to bowl 90mph added a different sort of variety to what was already a very good bowling attack. That's the role I wanted to do and I loved doing it.
Your career began towards the end of Dion Nash's, who also struggled with injuries. Was there any advice from him on how you should go about managing your body?
If you play international sports you're going to get injured at some time. We talked about different things that we were doing as bowlers and the strengths of each other.
You want to stay on the field as much as possible. But some people are more durable than others. The stresses we had on our bodies, we just didn't cope that well. I think that was a frustrating thing. It is always frustrating when you cop some stick that you are hurt all the time, but you are doing everything you can behind the scenes to stay on the park.
You were the bowling coach for New Zealand for three years, from 2012 till the end of the 2015 World Cup. Now you are with Mumbai Indians. When you have younger fast bowlers under your tutelage, are there things that you pass on about how to protect their bodies a bit more?
Yeah, definitely. That's one side of the game that I actually quite enjoy. They call it "bowler loading": it's being aware of the amount of load that's going through a bowler - not just from the bowling point of view, but everything that goes along with the game, like weight training, running - and to make informed decisions around that.
I'm quite big on measuring those bowling loads. You can see what has transpired and make adjustments to their programme to lower the chances of the players missing any games. I think you are always having those discussions with the bowlers: how much they are bowling, the type of bowling they are doing, rest and how they take it. You try to build trust with the bowlers so that they are confident that even if they take the rest - a couple of days off - they can perform at their top level.
We now have young fast bowlers like James Pattinson and Pat Cummins, who have had injuries to their backs. Considering what you had to go through in your career, what would you tell them so that they can have productive careers?
When you return from injury, take a little bit longer than you think you need to. A week or two at the back end of a recovery could save you a lot of time and perhaps prevent a reoccurring of the injury. With players like Pattinson, Cummins and Corey Anderson, you want them playing for your country because they can win you matches, so there is a tendency to hurry these guys back into the starting teams.
They go from bowling in the nets straight into international cricket. Not only is the intensity high when you are bowling at that level, there's also intensity in the field, the promotions, the travel etc. That takes its toll. So sometimes you want to take a measured approach. Play some club cricket, first-class cricket, just to manage that intensity back up into the national team. And once you are there, you still need to give the guys an opportunity for breaks, because you just can't do fast bowling 12 months of the year. You can't sustain your fitness, your performance or pace.
"My ability to bowl 90mph added a different sort of variety to what was already a very good bowling attack" © Getty Images
When the ball is delivered in excess of 150kph, the batsmen facing you realistically have no time to see the ball delivered and then plan a shot. So there is premeditation. Listener Kartikeya asks: does that premeditation have an effect on how you plan to get that batsman out?
I think premeditation is more prevalent in the shorter forms of the game. The batsmen guess to manipulate where the bowler is going to bowl. They will charge down the wicket and predict that the bowler is going to pitch it short [next ball]. Given the fields and the patterns that the bowlers bowl to, the quality batsmen will have the best guess. That's why you see them paddle or walk across the stumps. But when you bowl at 150k's, you wonder sometimes how they do that?
From my experience, just working with Tim Southee and working through some variations in the nets up against Kane Williamson, his ability to see what was going on in the hand was staggering. Even I [watching, as the coach] couldn't see the seam, but Williamson could see the different finger positions and what Tim was trying to do. He could see whether the ball was wobbling, he could tell which way [Southee] was trying to swing it. Maybe that is a mark of a genius. I was staggered by his ability to pick that up so early. Maybe that's what separates the great players from the not-so-great.
Let's say you are bowling at 150kph in a Test match. A top-level batsman is picking it from your hand, and he can sense what is coming from your angle and the field. When you see that the batsman is already prepared for what you are going to deliver, how do you adjust?
That's a good question. I've played against a number of great players who, even when you are bowling quick, seem to have all the time in the world (laughs). That's a real challenge. You do your work before you take the field, so you have ideas of the zones that you need to be bowling, and you just try to hang in there. With great players it takes a little bit longer. If it doesn't work, you have a word with your captain and away you go. You pick a different line or length of attack, or set different fields. If you can create doubt, they will make mistakes and you will get the wicket. The challenge against top batsmen is that they know the game so well it can be very difficult to do that. Sometimes it turns into a patience game. At other times, you bowl balls that are too good for them - it's nice when that happens.
What sort of visual cues do you take from the batsman to say, "All right, he's picking me really well right from the hand. Even before I'm delivering the ball, he's already made up his mind." What sort of things do you look for to recalibrate your bowling strategy?
When you go into a game, you already have an understanding of the zones that the batsmen like to score in. Obviously you want to stay away from those. Sometimes you think there is an area you want to attack and play to a batsman's strengths. Also, you know the areas they don't score in, and try to target those, make them go out of their zones to score. You look at their technique, see how deep they are batting in their crease, what sort of shots they are looking to play, what tempo they have brought to their game. Some players, like AB de Villiers, will bring different stuff on different days. So you've got to be adaptable.
Was there any premeditation to your bowling, or was it just a product of what happened the previous delivery?
It's a combination of both. You have an idea of where you want to bowl and how you want to set the batsman up based on an over. You might feel the best way to get a batsman out is to bowl the wider delivery and get him to drive. Maybe you feel like it is going to take you two to three overs to get him to do that, so you bowl a tight line, bowl the bouncer, and after two or three overs, you prepare to throw the wider ball out there as the sucker ball. That may not necessarily be the ball that gets him out, but in your mind, you try to construct an over before you start thinking: how am I going to get this player out?
The whole process gets shorter in the shorter formats of the game. In T20 every ball is an event. Every ball is vital. You have to have the ability to think clearly under pressure. Weigh up what happened the ball before and execute what you think is the very best ball you can bowl given the situation.
"You are always having those discussions with the bowlers: how much they are bowling, the type of bowling they are doing, rest and how they take it" © AFP
As the bowling coach of New Zealand, how did you construct a bowling plan going into a Test series?
We had two world-class bowlers in Southee and Trent Boult, who are swing bowlers, who want to bowl fuller. We talked about how they would bowl at the back end of the innings. We wanted to be aggressive and hostile at the back end, to the tail, make things as uncomfortable as we could to the lower order. You sift through all the information, you work out where the batsmen scored, the zones they are weak at - the line and length you want to attack. Then you sit down and discuss that as a group.
You come up with plans A, B and C. You also dig out all the information on the bowlers themselves, about the certain times in a Test match where they have had the most success, the length that they bowled with most success, and where the ball got hit when they had success. You can break down Trent Boult and tell that when the ball swings in the initial few overs, you might leave mid-on open and allow the batsman to push the ball when it moves across; and you might get a couple at midwicket because the ball swings and goes quickly through that area and brings in a catching chance.
Not only is it working out stuff on the opposition but also working out where and when is the most effective time to use your bowlers. If they did miss, where did they miss, so you can prepare a cover. Also, perhaps, areas you might open up for fielders so that it can be difficult to score there because of the balls discussed in the talks. You can manipulate your bowlers to the times when they bowled at their very best and hope they perform that role. Obviously, you crosscheck it with the captain.
There will be days when the balls are not coming out right, or the plans that they have in place don't work out. How swift is your feedback then? Are you continuously looking at what is happening on the field and then trying to pass on a message for any correction, or reaffirming faith in the plan?
That is the art of coaching, isn't it? There are times when it is important for the players to speak their mind, and you don't mind if they have a tough season or a tough match. It is important that they work out how they do certain things in a game. Other times, when it might be a critical part of the game, you might just walk around the boundary and offer a little bit of an advice: "Hey, if you thought about this as a plan, would you consider doing something like this?" I think that is all part of the trust process. It takes a little bit of time to build that up.
You start to understand the body language of the players. You can wander on the boundary sometimes and you may not even have to talk about cricket - just distract them if they are a little bit down on themselves. The longer you coach, the better you know your players. You start to understand when the player is feeling good and when they want to be spoken to. Some days you are not going to get it right, but the players have to understand that you are going to help them as best you can.
Let's say you have a plan where bowlers A, B and C were supposed to bowl three different lengths to a batsman, but then you realise they haven't done what they were supposed to do. So you get to them at the interval and tell them to stick to certain areas. How ready are they to take criticism and accountability for their actions?
It is important that all roles have a level of accountability. What the planning does is that it gives you a starting point. You want to have a plan you can fall back on when the percentages are not in your favour. Obviously, when you get into a match, sometimes the pitch is playing differently than what you expected and you have to have the ability to adjust and not just be stuck your ways. You need that start point, where you say, "If all else fails, we can go back to this. What history has told us is that this is a pretty good area to bowl as a group." And as the game goes on, as the ball gets older and the conditions change a touch, you need that ability and flexibility to say, "Hey, this hasn't quite worked. What are we going to go to now?" I was lucky that I had the expertise and the brains in the team to come up with plans to do this and that.
"You really need to know clearly at the back end of an ODI or T20 innings what you are going to do. That is when things can get away from a bowler" © AFP
You want the bowlers to own it. Some bowlers enjoy the preparation side more than others. You really need to know clearly at the back end of an ODI or T20 innings what you are going to do. That is when the real pressure is on and things can get away from a bowler. You have to be very careful about not making things too complicated for the bowler. When you are under pressure, you only want to know one or two key things about what you need to do. That is the big thing for me, to say, "Look, as long as you have a plan, back your plan under pressure." If it doesn't work, sometimes a batsman is going to play well and that is the way the game unfolds. I try to encourage players every day and get their confidence in doing their thing. If they have confidence, a lot of the times they succeed.
It seems like AB de Villiers has had a purple patch going for a few years now. How do you prepare for someone like that? Is the plan essentially defensive?
There is an understanding that when you are playing the best of the best - AB is one of the finest players in the world, if not the finest - that if he has his day, sometimes there is very little you could do to stop that. What happens, though, in my opinion, is that too often you get on the defensive too quickly. Once you are on the defensive and get the team to bowl full to players like AB, he knows where the ball is going to be. Then you are probably in more trouble.
The information is all out there about where these batsmen's lower-percentage options are. The challenge for the bowler is to stay there for as long as he can. That is why players like de Villiers are so hard to bowl to. They work you off your plan. The next thing you know is that they are on 60 or 70 and you are in trouble. They score so fast that they take the game away from you. I can bowl a good ball at these blokes and get whacked, but I just have to hang in there a bit longer. If I can hang in there, they can make a mistake.
You played under Stephen Fleming, who is considered a tactician, a strategist. When you were coach, your captain was Brendon McCullum, who came across as very aggressive, positive, going for wickets all the time. As a strike bowler, how do a captain's tendencies - hanging back and defending versus attacking all the time - affect you?
The biggest thing, from my point of view, is that you want to have faith in the captain and know that the captain has faith in you. It is a huge confidence boost. You can be the best captain in the world and have very ordinary bowlers. Then you certainly cannot go on the attack with four slips and a gully.
In the World Cup, when the likes of Southee and Boult were bowling and were on top of their game, you can captain in a manner like that because those guys can keep the line and length required. Sometimes, when those guys aren't quite in their form, it makes it a little bit more difficult. At the end of the day, a captain can only use the resources he has got. That is why preparation is important. Even though you may have the resources, sometimes the wickets are flat and you have to know how to stop the run flow and still have a plan to get somebody out. It is a combination of both.
The captain should have the right mindset, should sum up the conditions well, and have good preparation to know the zones for each player. It is a big responsibility to have, particularly in T20 cricket. If the captain is not on top of his stuff, you can run into a little trouble.
Are there any Test match and ODI spells that come to your mind when you look back at your career?
When you got bags of wickets, when you have spells with three or four wickets that turned a Test match, they are the most memorable ones. The six wickets against Australia was like a dream unfolding. That it was in a World Cup was unbelievable. Just sad that we lost the game, really. I was lucky enough to have some great spells. You still relive those moments and never forget the feeling that you had, particularly when you did something and the team had success. As you said, there have been a few in both ODIs and Tests. I will always enjoy the wickets that led to a Test win - they were the most special.
Any regrets about your body not allowing you to continue?
Ah, no. People still say that my career was cut short by injury. I was a late starter anyway, at 26, and I finished at 34. Mitchell Johnson has hung up his boots at the same age as I did. Having watched that last Test match [in Perth], what he was going through, I was going through the same. I wasn't bowling as fast as I used to in training before. I found it hard to stay motivated.
I think Ian Chappell made a comment about retirement - when you start to think about it, it is the time to go. I agree with him. I had a couple of years, but with back injuries, I never thought I would play for New Zealand again. All the games that I did were a real bonus. I am really lucky that the game has been good to me, that I am still involved in it and making a living out of it. It has been brilliant.
You were able to play only 18 Tests and 82 ODIs for New Zealand. Did you think of cutting back on your pace or shortening your run-up or changing your bowling action to reduce the stress on your body?
No. I had to remodel my action once I had surgery on my back. I spent a lot of time making adjustments. In terms of throttling back: no. In hindsight, perhaps I should have taken more time and dropped my pace a little bit. But I always felt that my success came from going 100% all the time. That was my role in the team. So I tried to prepare the best I could and fulfil that role. Unfortunately, a few injuries came along the way. But that's sport.
Did pride or ego get in the way?
No, I don't think so. My point of difference [from other bowlers] was my pace. If I dropped the pace to be more accurate, I would have fallen back into the pack and would have been competing with every other bowler. My ability to bowl 90mph added a different sort of variety to what was already a very good bowling attack. That's the role I wanted to do and I loved doing it.
Your career began towards the end of Dion Nash's, who also struggled with injuries. Was there any advice from him on how you should go about managing your body?
If you play international sports you're going to get injured at some time. We talked about different things that we were doing as bowlers and the strengths of each other.
You want to stay on the field as much as possible. But some people are more durable than others. The stresses we had on our bodies, we just didn't cope that well. I think that was a frustrating thing. It is always frustrating when you cop some stick that you are hurt all the time, but you are doing everything you can behind the scenes to stay on the park.
You were the bowling coach for New Zealand for three years, from 2012 till the end of the 2015 World Cup. Now you are with Mumbai Indians. When you have younger fast bowlers under your tutelage, are there things that you pass on about how to protect their bodies a bit more?
Yeah, definitely. That's one side of the game that I actually quite enjoy. They call it "bowler loading": it's being aware of the amount of load that's going through a bowler - not just from the bowling point of view, but everything that goes along with the game, like weight training, running - and to make informed decisions around that.
I'm quite big on measuring those bowling loads. You can see what has transpired and make adjustments to their programme to lower the chances of the players missing any games. I think you are always having those discussions with the bowlers: how much they are bowling, the type of bowling they are doing, rest and how they take it. You try to build trust with the bowlers so that they are confident that even if they take the rest - a couple of days off - they can perform at their top level.
We now have young fast bowlers like James Pattinson and Pat Cummins, who have had injuries to their backs. Considering what you had to go through in your career, what would you tell them so that they can have productive careers?
When you return from injury, take a little bit longer than you think you need to. A week or two at the back end of a recovery could save you a lot of time and perhaps prevent a reoccurring of the injury. With players like Pattinson, Cummins and Corey Anderson, you want them playing for your country because they can win you matches, so there is a tendency to hurry these guys back into the starting teams.
They go from bowling in the nets straight into international cricket. Not only is the intensity high when you are bowling at that level, there's also intensity in the field, the promotions, the travel etc. That takes its toll. So sometimes you want to take a measured approach. Play some club cricket, first-class cricket, just to manage that intensity back up into the national team. And once you are there, you still need to give the guys an opportunity for breaks, because you just can't do fast bowling 12 months of the year. You can't sustain your fitness, your performance or pace.
"My ability to bowl 90mph added a different sort of variety to what was already a very good bowling attack" © Getty ImagesWhen the ball is delivered in excess of 150kph, the batsmen facing you realistically have no time to see the ball delivered and then plan a shot. So there is premeditation. Listener Kartikeya asks: does that premeditation have an effect on how you plan to get that batsman out?
I think premeditation is more prevalent in the shorter forms of the game. The batsmen guess to manipulate where the bowler is going to bowl. They will charge down the wicket and predict that the bowler is going to pitch it short [next ball]. Given the fields and the patterns that the bowlers bowl to, the quality batsmen will have the best guess. That's why you see them paddle or walk across the stumps. But when you bowl at 150k's, you wonder sometimes how they do that?
From my experience, just working with Tim Southee and working through some variations in the nets up against Kane Williamson, his ability to see what was going on in the hand was staggering. Even I [watching, as the coach] couldn't see the seam, but Williamson could see the different finger positions and what Tim was trying to do. He could see whether the ball was wobbling, he could tell which way [Southee] was trying to swing it. Maybe that is a mark of a genius. I was staggered by his ability to pick that up so early. Maybe that's what separates the great players from the not-so-great.
Let's say you are bowling at 150kph in a Test match. A top-level batsman is picking it from your hand, and he can sense what is coming from your angle and the field. When you see that the batsman is already prepared for what you are going to deliver, how do you adjust?
That's a good question. I've played against a number of great players who, even when you are bowling quick, seem to have all the time in the world (laughs). That's a real challenge. You do your work before you take the field, so you have ideas of the zones that you need to be bowling, and you just try to hang in there. With great players it takes a little bit longer. If it doesn't work, you have a word with your captain and away you go. You pick a different line or length of attack, or set different fields. If you can create doubt, they will make mistakes and you will get the wicket. The challenge against top batsmen is that they know the game so well it can be very difficult to do that. Sometimes it turns into a patience game. At other times, you bowl balls that are too good for them - it's nice when that happens.
What sort of visual cues do you take from the batsman to say, "All right, he's picking me really well right from the hand. Even before I'm delivering the ball, he's already made up his mind." What sort of things do you look for to recalibrate your bowling strategy?
When you go into a game, you already have an understanding of the zones that the batsmen like to score in. Obviously you want to stay away from those. Sometimes you think there is an area you want to attack and play to a batsman's strengths. Also, you know the areas they don't score in, and try to target those, make them go out of their zones to score. You look at their technique, see how deep they are batting in their crease, what sort of shots they are looking to play, what tempo they have brought to their game. Some players, like AB de Villiers, will bring different stuff on different days. So you've got to be adaptable.
Was there any premeditation to your bowling, or was it just a product of what happened the previous delivery?
It's a combination of both. You have an idea of where you want to bowl and how you want to set the batsman up based on an over. You might feel the best way to get a batsman out is to bowl the wider delivery and get him to drive. Maybe you feel like it is going to take you two to three overs to get him to do that, so you bowl a tight line, bowl the bouncer, and after two or three overs, you prepare to throw the wider ball out there as the sucker ball. That may not necessarily be the ball that gets him out, but in your mind, you try to construct an over before you start thinking: how am I going to get this player out?
The whole process gets shorter in the shorter formats of the game. In T20 every ball is an event. Every ball is vital. You have to have the ability to think clearly under pressure. Weigh up what happened the ball before and execute what you think is the very best ball you can bowl given the situation.
"You are always having those discussions with the bowlers: how much they are bowling, the type of bowling they are doing, rest and how they take it" © AFPAs the bowling coach of New Zealand, how did you construct a bowling plan going into a Test series?
We had two world-class bowlers in Southee and Trent Boult, who are swing bowlers, who want to bowl fuller. We talked about how they would bowl at the back end of the innings. We wanted to be aggressive and hostile at the back end, to the tail, make things as uncomfortable as we could to the lower order. You sift through all the information, you work out where the batsmen scored, the zones they are weak at - the line and length you want to attack. Then you sit down and discuss that as a group.
You come up with plans A, B and C. You also dig out all the information on the bowlers themselves, about the certain times in a Test match where they have had the most success, the length that they bowled with most success, and where the ball got hit when they had success. You can break down Trent Boult and tell that when the ball swings in the initial few overs, you might leave mid-on open and allow the batsman to push the ball when it moves across; and you might get a couple at midwicket because the ball swings and goes quickly through that area and brings in a catching chance.
Not only is it working out stuff on the opposition but also working out where and when is the most effective time to use your bowlers. If they did miss, where did they miss, so you can prepare a cover. Also, perhaps, areas you might open up for fielders so that it can be difficult to score there because of the balls discussed in the talks. You can manipulate your bowlers to the times when they bowled at their very best and hope they perform that role. Obviously, you crosscheck it with the captain.
There will be days when the balls are not coming out right, or the plans that they have in place don't work out. How swift is your feedback then? Are you continuously looking at what is happening on the field and then trying to pass on a message for any correction, or reaffirming faith in the plan?
That is the art of coaching, isn't it? There are times when it is important for the players to speak their mind, and you don't mind if they have a tough season or a tough match. It is important that they work out how they do certain things in a game. Other times, when it might be a critical part of the game, you might just walk around the boundary and offer a little bit of an advice: "Hey, if you thought about this as a plan, would you consider doing something like this?" I think that is all part of the trust process. It takes a little bit of time to build that up.
You start to understand the body language of the players. You can wander on the boundary sometimes and you may not even have to talk about cricket - just distract them if they are a little bit down on themselves. The longer you coach, the better you know your players. You start to understand when the player is feeling good and when they want to be spoken to. Some days you are not going to get it right, but the players have to understand that you are going to help them as best you can.
Let's say you have a plan where bowlers A, B and C were supposed to bowl three different lengths to a batsman, but then you realise they haven't done what they were supposed to do. So you get to them at the interval and tell them to stick to certain areas. How ready are they to take criticism and accountability for their actions?
It is important that all roles have a level of accountability. What the planning does is that it gives you a starting point. You want to have a plan you can fall back on when the percentages are not in your favour. Obviously, when you get into a match, sometimes the pitch is playing differently than what you expected and you have to have the ability to adjust and not just be stuck your ways. You need that start point, where you say, "If all else fails, we can go back to this. What history has told us is that this is a pretty good area to bowl as a group." And as the game goes on, as the ball gets older and the conditions change a touch, you need that ability and flexibility to say, "Hey, this hasn't quite worked. What are we going to go to now?" I was lucky that I had the expertise and the brains in the team to come up with plans to do this and that.
"You really need to know clearly at the back end of an ODI or T20 innings what you are going to do. That is when things can get away from a bowler" © AFPYou want the bowlers to own it. Some bowlers enjoy the preparation side more than others. You really need to know clearly at the back end of an ODI or T20 innings what you are going to do. That is when the real pressure is on and things can get away from a bowler. You have to be very careful about not making things too complicated for the bowler. When you are under pressure, you only want to know one or two key things about what you need to do. That is the big thing for me, to say, "Look, as long as you have a plan, back your plan under pressure." If it doesn't work, sometimes a batsman is going to play well and that is the way the game unfolds. I try to encourage players every day and get their confidence in doing their thing. If they have confidence, a lot of the times they succeed.
It seems like AB de Villiers has had a purple patch going for a few years now. How do you prepare for someone like that? Is the plan essentially defensive?
There is an understanding that when you are playing the best of the best - AB is one of the finest players in the world, if not the finest - that if he has his day, sometimes there is very little you could do to stop that. What happens, though, in my opinion, is that too often you get on the defensive too quickly. Once you are on the defensive and get the team to bowl full to players like AB, he knows where the ball is going to be. Then you are probably in more trouble.
The information is all out there about where these batsmen's lower-percentage options are. The challenge for the bowler is to stay there for as long as he can. That is why players like de Villiers are so hard to bowl to. They work you off your plan. The next thing you know is that they are on 60 or 70 and you are in trouble. They score so fast that they take the game away from you. I can bowl a good ball at these blokes and get whacked, but I just have to hang in there a bit longer. If I can hang in there, they can make a mistake.
You played under Stephen Fleming, who is considered a tactician, a strategist. When you were coach, your captain was Brendon McCullum, who came across as very aggressive, positive, going for wickets all the time. As a strike bowler, how do a captain's tendencies - hanging back and defending versus attacking all the time - affect you?
The biggest thing, from my point of view, is that you want to have faith in the captain and know that the captain has faith in you. It is a huge confidence boost. You can be the best captain in the world and have very ordinary bowlers. Then you certainly cannot go on the attack with four slips and a gully.
In the World Cup, when the likes of Southee and Boult were bowling and were on top of their game, you can captain in a manner like that because those guys can keep the line and length required. Sometimes, when those guys aren't quite in their form, it makes it a little bit more difficult. At the end of the day, a captain can only use the resources he has got. That is why preparation is important. Even though you may have the resources, sometimes the wickets are flat and you have to know how to stop the run flow and still have a plan to get somebody out. It is a combination of both.
The captain should have the right mindset, should sum up the conditions well, and have good preparation to know the zones for each player. It is a big responsibility to have, particularly in T20 cricket. If the captain is not on top of his stuff, you can run into a little trouble.
Are there any Test match and ODI spells that come to your mind when you look back at your career?
When you got bags of wickets, when you have spells with three or four wickets that turned a Test match, they are the most memorable ones. The six wickets against Australia was like a dream unfolding. That it was in a World Cup was unbelievable. Just sad that we lost the game, really. I was lucky enough to have some great spells. You still relive those moments and never forget the feeling that you had, particularly when you did something and the team had success. As you said, there have been a few in both ODIs and Tests. I will always enjoy the wickets that led to a Test win - they were the most special.
Any regrets about your body not allowing you to continue?
Ah, no. People still say that my career was cut short by injury. I was a late starter anyway, at 26, and I finished at 34. Mitchell Johnson has hung up his boots at the same age as I did. Having watched that last Test match [in Perth], what he was going through, I was going through the same. I wasn't bowling as fast as I used to in training before. I found it hard to stay motivated.
I think Ian Chappell made a comment about retirement - when you start to think about it, it is the time to go. I agree with him. I had a couple of years, but with back injuries, I never thought I would play for New Zealand again. All the games that I did were a real bonus. I am really lucky that the game has been good to me, that I am still involved in it and making a living out of it. It has been brilliant.
Saturday, 21 November 2015
Misbah breaks it down
Osman Samiuddin in Cricinfo
The Pakistan captain talks about the many observations, plots and decisions that go into the game's most important task: taking wickets
Keep calm or Misbah will get you © Associated Press
Two sharp short balls, slightly misdirected either side of Stuart Broad's body, sandwiched a yorker in the 102nd over of England's second innings in Dubai. In total, that meant that five of the last six balls Wahab Riaz had bowled to Broad were short. A couple were genuinely hairy, but all were good enough to keep him rooted deep in the crease. Who knows what Broad was expecting fourth ball of that over, but could it have been anything other than a bouncer or a yorker?
Who knows, indeed, what Wahab would have bowled to him - in the end he went with the suggestion of Misbah-ul-Haq. The captain already had a conventional forward short leg in place. He decided to place another - another "silly", he said - in, but finer. He was standing at square leg himself and he told Wahab to bowl a yorker, but a slower one.
"We were attacking him with the bouncer and the yorker, so he was prepared for both," Misbah said a few days later. "His weight was moving back a little and he was prepared for the full yorker. So I felt, if he gets a slower one here, he will get time and his weight will still be on the back foot."
Sitting down, Misbah illustrated the movement he intended to elicit from Broad - a jerky, panicked jab down to the ball, the aim still to prevent it from hitting his toes or stumps but now scrambled by the lack of pace and flight.
"With that weight going back, if you go to play a slower ball inevitably you loft the shot in the air. I took two sillys on that side, one fine, one normal, and the plan was that he would lob to either."
Wahab bowled it just right, the slower ball not looping so much but dipping at Broad's toes with the lazy menace of a paper plane in descent. Broad did exactly as Misbah predicted, half-hopping while hurrying the bat down and lobbing the ball away. It went, with uncanny precision, between the two "sillys", flirting boldly with both, not committing to either.
Because he is a captain who understands so well the angles of the game, and the consequences of tweaking them to tiny degrees, his handling of spinners has mostly suggested he was born for it
Misbah's gambit did not come off, though in the way of unrequited love it was no less powerful for its failure.
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Misbah-ul-Haq has stood between Pakistan and extinction. He has taken Pakistan by the collar and shaken some calm into them. He is a man of quiet integrity and dignity, of exceedingly stable temperament, and it is in this image that he has built his Pakistan side.
Five years after he became captain, a year after becoming their most successful captain (in terms of Test match wins), and now closer to an exit than ever before, these, bafflingly, remain the popular and intangible ways in which Misbah is spoken about - that is, we speak of his leadership as man, which in its example of him is ample. We hardly talk of his captaincy as cricketer, which is a different thing altogether (see Miandad, J), and when we do, it has swiftly escalated into fractious and tiresome ideological debates about the effect of his batting on his team in ODIs.
Which is odd in one sense because, by most accounts, Misbah is a cricket tragic, nerdily wired into the intricacies of the game. This revelation to Hassan Cheema in a recent profile , for example, from a producer when Misbah was working as a TV analyst:
"For him, every ball was something he needed to see. The only time he stopped watching was when he had to pray, but even then, after he was finished praying he would ask me or someone about every ball: who played the shot, what happened, was it a slower ball - he wanted to know everything. He knew about everyone too, and he read the mind of the fielding captains to perfection. Even as Netherlands were bowling their seventh over he would know who would bowl their 15th over, for example, and he would nearly always be proven right."
The details of that Broad set-up, in fact, Misbah had voluntarily divulged, and in typical Misbah fashion. At the post-win press conference, he had first put on his Misbah face (find wall, stare at wall, answer wall) and spoken in the generalised way about the game that these interactions require. Then, as often happens, he exited the stage, to be encircled by a group of journalists. It is here, usually, that he talks with surprising candidness and more specifically about the game. I asked him about another dismissal that day, which he talked us through, before he asked whether we had noticed the slower ball to Broad.
Give Hashim Amla "a doosra from middle and leg" © Getty Images
A few days later, on the second evening of the Sharjah Test, we sat down to discuss this and the other granules that make up the real substance of a captaincy. England were establishing a loose - and ultimately brief - sense of control over the game and it had been a long day. Misbah looked a little more haggard than usual. He had hemmed and hawed when I first mentioned the idea of the interview, worrying whether, in the middle of a Test, he would be able to summon enough such instances from such a long tenure. But he had agreed to meet and as it turned out, remembering was not a problem. Most of what he recalled was recent but had there been more time, I can imagine him remembering decisions he made in the tape-ball games of his youth.
****
The Bairstow wrong'un
On the same day as the Broad near-miss, Yasir Shah bowled Jonny Bairstow with a googly and ran straight to Misbah to celebrate, acknowledging his captain's role. Until then, Bairstow had played Shah securely, including three full overs late on the fourth day. On the fifth he again looked fairly confident, both in leaving and playing him with the bat. Shah came at him from both sides, and especially when he was over the wicket, Bairstow was recognising and leaving legbreaks pitched outside off so well, each leave carried the force of a firm-intentioned stroke. The googly was observing purdah.
The guiding force of Misbah's on-field captaincy is a deep grasp of the mechanics of batsmanship. It is an acuity that the greatest are sometimes unable to articulate; perhaps because Misbah operates so resolutely within his limitations, he recognises the boundaries within which opposing batsmen operate in different circumstances, as well as, of course, the overarching fragility of batting as a task.
"What was happening, actually, the legbreak that was coming on middle he was playing pretty easily. The one outside off, he had clearly made a plan that he was going to stretch out far forward and then leave it. He was leaving it well.
"Sometimes you see when a batsman is set on a plan, you want to mess with his mind a little. You see patterns, so you want to make him play differently, when there are chances of mistakes"
"As a batsman when I am doing this, if suddenly from the same line from where I am leaving I get a googly, even if I know it is a googly, the chances of my making a mistake are high. Even if you recognise it, because the intention from that line is to not play it - mentally you have planned you are going to leave it. Suddenly from there when it is a googly, you decide to try and play, you can still miss it. I said to Yasir, 'Bowl him two to three googlies in a row so that the intention he has to leave the legbreak from that line [is affected].'"
Shah bowled him the first googly that day and from how Bairstow shaped to play it he had clearly picked it. But having gotten used to leaving, or just defending, suddenly another option of scoring through the vacant midwicket - Misbah had a gully instead - affected the execution. That it happened off the very first googly was a bonus.
Tying up Hashim Amla
In the field, all captains work to one end: wickets. It's just that their approach to the cost of getting them - runs - is different. Some, like Michael Clarke, are willing to give up a few more. To Misbah, runs are gold dust. He hates conceding them, whatever the situation. He plans for wickets by not giving away runs, not by setting unusual fields or asking his bowlers to do anything fancy or cute.
It is an instinct that served him well in what he says is the one moment of captaincy he will never forget. It came at the death of an ODI in Port Elizabeth in 2013. South Africa, with Hashim Amla and JP Duminy at the crease, needed less than a run a ball from the last two overs (11 off 12). Misbah had Saeed Ajmal and Junaid Khan and it was the penultimate over from Ajmal that won it.
He remembers every detail because he talked Ajmal through the entire piece, but not exactly in its right place: he was off on the chronology of the over.
"Amla was on 97, Saeed was round the stumps. He asked me, 'What should I do?' I said, 'First ball, a little outside off, he will wait for the ball, push to covers and take one.' Back foot he will go to play there. So I said to him, make sure you finish on off stump, your offbreak, don't bowl the doosra. Don't bowl to middle and leg, bowl the offbreak on off so that if he moves to play it there, if it is a little slow, he will not get pace and he'll be waiting for the doosra. There is a chance that he does not get a single there. He wants a single, so try not to give him anything on his legs, or outside off."
To Jonathan Trott, "bowl short of length and either cramp him, or just outside off" © Associated Press
Misbah mistakenly remembers the first four balls as dots. Amla tucked the first ball, on middle and leg, to midwicket for a single. What Misbah remembers as the last ball of the over, to Duminy, was actually the second ball, though in instruction to Ajmal he was correct: "Last ball Duminy was there. Saeed said, give him a deep midwicket as he will sweep it, so I will bowl off stump. I said, he will sweep from outside off. Midwicket is up, just bowl him a straight offbreak, a bit quicker. If it stays straight he could be leg-before, if he hits it, he hits it." He tried to sweep and missed it, a dot ball.
Duminy got a single off the next, bringing Amla back on strike, on 98, three balls left in the over. The fourth was a dot, Ajmal following Amla's movement as he backed away. The fifth was the original plan, though probably a little wider than intended. Amla still couldn't get it away.
"He panicked a little, nine needed and it was ball to ball, the panic button was on. Saeed can also panic, of course. So I said to him, if I was a batsman at this stage, I would not be looking for a single, I will look for a boundary, a big shot. Because nine runs off eight [actually seven], however big a batsman, he is under pressure now.
"Now he will not try to hit over cover, he will go for a big shot. So I said, now you have to give him a doosra from middle and leg, because now he will hit it. He bowled it and Amla skied it straight up [to be caught halfway to the boundary]."
Pakistan won eventually by a run, sealing a first ODI series win in South Africa and the first by a subcontinent side in the country.
Fast, slow?
No Pakistani captain has relied as heavily on spin as Misbah, not even Miandad, who, usually in Imran's absence and at home, was happy to rely on them. Fifty-nine per cent of the wickets taken under Misbah have been by spin; 58% of the overs bowled by spinners. In that, he is an outlier among Pakistan's major captains. Corresponding percentages for Abdul Kardar, Imran and Miandad are, in order: 23% of wickets and 33% of overs; 29% of wickets and 36% of overs; 46% of wickets and 48% of overs.
Sitting down, Misbah illustrated the movement he intended to elicit from Broad, a jerky, panicked jab down to the ball, the aim being to prevent it from hitting his toes or stumps but now scrambled by the lack of pace and flight
To a degree it has been thrust upon him by circumstance: as much by the attack that was left to him once he took over as by the surfaces on which Pakistan played "home" Tests. Had he the Mohammads, Amir and Asif, who knows how his captaincy would have played out. But because he is a captain who understands so well the angles to which the game is played, and the consequences of tweaking them to tiny degrees, his handling of spinners has mostly suggested he was born for it.
He insisted he is as comfortable with fast bowlers, though he let slip a perhaps natural caution in expanding: "If a guy is bowling with control and he knows where the ball is going and how much it is swinging, then it becomes easy. It becomes difficult when the ball is not being controlled, or it is swinging both ways too much, or if he is struggling with line and length."
Control - not conceding runs - is vital to Misbah and it is his spinners who have always given him utmost control. Consequently, in the absence of Asif and Amir, and other than in a few phases, Misbah has sometimes come across as intrinsically untrusting of fast bowlers. He was, for instance, so despondent at the prospect of playing three fast bowlers in the first Test against England last month (Shah was injured, with no back-up) that it felt as if he had conceded the Test before it even began.
He has had his moments with them, though. He remembered the dismissal of Dinesh Chandimal in the second innings of the famous Sharjah Test last year. Mohammad Talha had bowled especially well on what was basically a strip of quicksand, and was brought into the attack with a 38-over-old ball. Misbah, at mid-off, had been watching Chandimal grow in confidence and told Talha to bowl a bouncer into his body. Talha did and Chandimal awkwardly ducked under it. He bowled a length ball outswinger next, which Chandimal left.
"Now he says, next ball I will bowl another outswinger. I said, 'Outswing and bouncer he is ready to leave. So from some way out, bring the ball in a little to get him to play a forward defensive.' It was reversing a little. I thought because of the bouncer, his weight will stay back a little. He will not come forward properly or fully. If you land it on a good spot, even if there is a tiny gap, he's gone."
It went as Misbah said, though it was helped by the size of the gap Chandimal left. (It is worth noting the degree to which Misbah can be involved in constructing overs, ball by ball, with his bowlers.)
Fifty-nine per cent of the wickets taken under Misbah have been by spin © AFP
A bigger tapestry to draw upon is Pakistan's working over of Jonathan Trott in the UAE. In a Test series marked by the control Pakistan's spinners exerted over England's batting, Trott being dismissed by pace in three innings out of six was almost anomalous (and more so than for anyone else in the top seven). Sure, at one-down he was always likelier to face fast bowlers than others but there was an undeniable pattern to the dismissals. Misbah and Pakistan had picked up on an imbalance in the Trott shuffle.
"He plays on the move lots and the shuffle was always towards off stump and a little moving forward. The back foot does not go back and across, it moves up a little. It is a different shuffle, so the ball that is pulled wide a little, he tries to drive it, he tries to get close to it.
"Whenever you bowl outside off to him, short-of-a-length ball, he will be on the move, weight going forward, and that gives you a chance. If you give him one towards his body [motions at his ribs], he will be playing that. Sometimes when he moved forward to try and play to leg, he would be a leg-before shout, and he hit so many through midwicket. So we noticed and thought that because he walks towards off, we bowl short of length and either cramp him [at his body], or just outside off. Only the odd ball towards pads. But however much he walks out, you pull him even further so that he plays on the move. We knew spin was our strength, but with him we thought, he will chase a ball outside off, or even a short ball past his ribs."
Trott's three dismissals to pace: the first, moving across and strangled down the leg side to a short ball; the second, chasing a short-of-length delivery far outside off; and the last, leg-before to one swinging into his pads. Trott's technical troubles with the short ball came to wider attention in 2013, in encounters with Mitchell Johnson, and it ended his career. But in the relative anonymity of Dubai, long before, Pakistan had already worked him out.
****
After a while Misbah was recalling all kinds of little plans and plots without prompting. Each time there was a conversational pause, on the verge of blossoming into an awkward silence, he thought of another, like the two dismissals of Alastair Cook in the second Test in Dubai.
To Misbah, runs are gold dust. He plans for wickets by not giving away runs, not by setting unusual fields or asking his bowlers to do anything fancy or cute
As with the Bairstow googly, they revealed Misbah's understanding of batsmanship but also a mental nimbleness. The plan was for Shah to attack the rough from round the wicket to Cook, with a man at 45 for the sweep. But Misbah sensed at one point that Cook was well set - "paka hua hai" - so he brought in a leg slip and Shah went over. Cook was gone almost immediately, caught there by Ahmed Shehzad.
In the second innings, he reversed it. Shah began at Cook from over the wicket. But during the drinks break before his next over, Misbah asked him to switch, to what was their original first-innings plan. "I said, 'Bowl to him from round, where he plays well.' Yasir said, 'No, this is our plan, this is what we stick to.' My thinking was that the sweep is his pet shot, he has confidence in it. But this is a fourth-day pitch, the rough is greater, he will hit but he might top-edge. As soon as he went there, he top-edged.
"Sometimes you see when a batsman is set on a plan, you want to mess with his mind a little. You see patterns, so you want to make him play differently, when there are chances of mistakes."
One of the more striking descriptions he used was for the body position he wanted to force David Warner into, in the second innings of the Dubai Test last year. Warner scored a hundred in the first and was playing well in the second. Misbah told Zulfiqar Babar, with a relatively new ball, to go round the wicket, convincing him to leave cover vacant. "From this angle if you bowl middle, you'll get drift and baazoo nahin khulenge [his shoulders won't open fully, or move freely] while trying to force a shot. He tried to do exactly that, to force one through covers, missed it - ball went with the angle straight past him and he got stumped."
Shoulder-charged: in Dubai last year David Warner was stumped from a delivery bowled round the wicket and pitched on middle stump © Getty Images
None of this is to paint Misbah as a unique and extraordinarily innovative tactician. Captaincy doesn't work to such simple descriptions. His reading of batsmen is notable, but most captains would - or could - make some of these moves. And any captain still has to have the bowlers to succeed.
If anything, an alternative (and not incorrect) interpretation would be that Misbah is extremely fortunate in having the bowlers he has had. Nor is he a solitary decision-maker. Ideas come from unexpected places. In Pallekele this summer, Misbah pointed out, it was Shan Masood who suggested bowling Azhar Ali at Dimuth Karunaratne in the second innings, because his googly would trouble him. Azhar had Karunaratne stumped - off the googly - and he took another wicket next ball, fortuitously, for good measure.
But Misbah is rare in the tradition of Pakistan captains, in that very few will recall and then want to talk about such details. Miandad, maybe Mushtaq Mohammad; and Miandad will segue effortlessly into a list of all the injustices enacted upon him. And also, it is worth reminding ourselves that being calm and equanimous doesn't win matches, not directly anyway. It doesn't make you your country's most successful captain. It is these moves, made every few overs, sometimes every few deliveries, that are the real debris of a captaincy.
The Pakistan captain talks about the many observations, plots and decisions that go into the game's most important task: taking wickets
Keep calm or Misbah will get you © Associated PressTwo sharp short balls, slightly misdirected either side of Stuart Broad's body, sandwiched a yorker in the 102nd over of England's second innings in Dubai. In total, that meant that five of the last six balls Wahab Riaz had bowled to Broad were short. A couple were genuinely hairy, but all were good enough to keep him rooted deep in the crease. Who knows what Broad was expecting fourth ball of that over, but could it have been anything other than a bouncer or a yorker?
Who knows, indeed, what Wahab would have bowled to him - in the end he went with the suggestion of Misbah-ul-Haq. The captain already had a conventional forward short leg in place. He decided to place another - another "silly", he said - in, but finer. He was standing at square leg himself and he told Wahab to bowl a yorker, but a slower one.
"We were attacking him with the bouncer and the yorker, so he was prepared for both," Misbah said a few days later. "His weight was moving back a little and he was prepared for the full yorker. So I felt, if he gets a slower one here, he will get time and his weight will still be on the back foot."
Sitting down, Misbah illustrated the movement he intended to elicit from Broad - a jerky, panicked jab down to the ball, the aim still to prevent it from hitting his toes or stumps but now scrambled by the lack of pace and flight.
"With that weight going back, if you go to play a slower ball inevitably you loft the shot in the air. I took two sillys on that side, one fine, one normal, and the plan was that he would lob to either."
Wahab bowled it just right, the slower ball not looping so much but dipping at Broad's toes with the lazy menace of a paper plane in descent. Broad did exactly as Misbah predicted, half-hopping while hurrying the bat down and lobbing the ball away. It went, with uncanny precision, between the two "sillys", flirting boldly with both, not committing to either.
Because he is a captain who understands so well the angles of the game, and the consequences of tweaking them to tiny degrees, his handling of spinners has mostly suggested he was born for it
Misbah's gambit did not come off, though in the way of unrequited love it was no less powerful for its failure.
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Misbah-ul-Haq has stood between Pakistan and extinction. He has taken Pakistan by the collar and shaken some calm into them. He is a man of quiet integrity and dignity, of exceedingly stable temperament, and it is in this image that he has built his Pakistan side.
Five years after he became captain, a year after becoming their most successful captain (in terms of Test match wins), and now closer to an exit than ever before, these, bafflingly, remain the popular and intangible ways in which Misbah is spoken about - that is, we speak of his leadership as man, which in its example of him is ample. We hardly talk of his captaincy as cricketer, which is a different thing altogether (see Miandad, J), and when we do, it has swiftly escalated into fractious and tiresome ideological debates about the effect of his batting on his team in ODIs.
Which is odd in one sense because, by most accounts, Misbah is a cricket tragic, nerdily wired into the intricacies of the game. This revelation to Hassan Cheema in a recent profile , for example, from a producer when Misbah was working as a TV analyst:
"For him, every ball was something he needed to see. The only time he stopped watching was when he had to pray, but even then, after he was finished praying he would ask me or someone about every ball: who played the shot, what happened, was it a slower ball - he wanted to know everything. He knew about everyone too, and he read the mind of the fielding captains to perfection. Even as Netherlands were bowling their seventh over he would know who would bowl their 15th over, for example, and he would nearly always be proven right."
The details of that Broad set-up, in fact, Misbah had voluntarily divulged, and in typical Misbah fashion. At the post-win press conference, he had first put on his Misbah face (find wall, stare at wall, answer wall) and spoken in the generalised way about the game that these interactions require. Then, as often happens, he exited the stage, to be encircled by a group of journalists. It is here, usually, that he talks with surprising candidness and more specifically about the game. I asked him about another dismissal that day, which he talked us through, before he asked whether we had noticed the slower ball to Broad.
Give Hashim Amla "a doosra from middle and leg" © Getty ImagesA few days later, on the second evening of the Sharjah Test, we sat down to discuss this and the other granules that make up the real substance of a captaincy. England were establishing a loose - and ultimately brief - sense of control over the game and it had been a long day. Misbah looked a little more haggard than usual. He had hemmed and hawed when I first mentioned the idea of the interview, worrying whether, in the middle of a Test, he would be able to summon enough such instances from such a long tenure. But he had agreed to meet and as it turned out, remembering was not a problem. Most of what he recalled was recent but had there been more time, I can imagine him remembering decisions he made in the tape-ball games of his youth.
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The Bairstow wrong'un
On the same day as the Broad near-miss, Yasir Shah bowled Jonny Bairstow with a googly and ran straight to Misbah to celebrate, acknowledging his captain's role. Until then, Bairstow had played Shah securely, including three full overs late on the fourth day. On the fifth he again looked fairly confident, both in leaving and playing him with the bat. Shah came at him from both sides, and especially when he was over the wicket, Bairstow was recognising and leaving legbreaks pitched outside off so well, each leave carried the force of a firm-intentioned stroke. The googly was observing purdah.
The guiding force of Misbah's on-field captaincy is a deep grasp of the mechanics of batsmanship. It is an acuity that the greatest are sometimes unable to articulate; perhaps because Misbah operates so resolutely within his limitations, he recognises the boundaries within which opposing batsmen operate in different circumstances, as well as, of course, the overarching fragility of batting as a task.
"What was happening, actually, the legbreak that was coming on middle he was playing pretty easily. The one outside off, he had clearly made a plan that he was going to stretch out far forward and then leave it. He was leaving it well.
"Sometimes you see when a batsman is set on a plan, you want to mess with his mind a little. You see patterns, so you want to make him play differently, when there are chances of mistakes"
"As a batsman when I am doing this, if suddenly from the same line from where I am leaving I get a googly, even if I know it is a googly, the chances of my making a mistake are high. Even if you recognise it, because the intention from that line is to not play it - mentally you have planned you are going to leave it. Suddenly from there when it is a googly, you decide to try and play, you can still miss it. I said to Yasir, 'Bowl him two to three googlies in a row so that the intention he has to leave the legbreak from that line [is affected].'"
Shah bowled him the first googly that day and from how Bairstow shaped to play it he had clearly picked it. But having gotten used to leaving, or just defending, suddenly another option of scoring through the vacant midwicket - Misbah had a gully instead - affected the execution. That it happened off the very first googly was a bonus.
Tying up Hashim Amla
In the field, all captains work to one end: wickets. It's just that their approach to the cost of getting them - runs - is different. Some, like Michael Clarke, are willing to give up a few more. To Misbah, runs are gold dust. He hates conceding them, whatever the situation. He plans for wickets by not giving away runs, not by setting unusual fields or asking his bowlers to do anything fancy or cute.
It is an instinct that served him well in what he says is the one moment of captaincy he will never forget. It came at the death of an ODI in Port Elizabeth in 2013. South Africa, with Hashim Amla and JP Duminy at the crease, needed less than a run a ball from the last two overs (11 off 12). Misbah had Saeed Ajmal and Junaid Khan and it was the penultimate over from Ajmal that won it.
He remembers every detail because he talked Ajmal through the entire piece, but not exactly in its right place: he was off on the chronology of the over.
"Amla was on 97, Saeed was round the stumps. He asked me, 'What should I do?' I said, 'First ball, a little outside off, he will wait for the ball, push to covers and take one.' Back foot he will go to play there. So I said to him, make sure you finish on off stump, your offbreak, don't bowl the doosra. Don't bowl to middle and leg, bowl the offbreak on off so that if he moves to play it there, if it is a little slow, he will not get pace and he'll be waiting for the doosra. There is a chance that he does not get a single there. He wants a single, so try not to give him anything on his legs, or outside off."
To Jonathan Trott, "bowl short of length and either cramp him, or just outside off" © Associated PressMisbah mistakenly remembers the first four balls as dots. Amla tucked the first ball, on middle and leg, to midwicket for a single. What Misbah remembers as the last ball of the over, to Duminy, was actually the second ball, though in instruction to Ajmal he was correct: "Last ball Duminy was there. Saeed said, give him a deep midwicket as he will sweep it, so I will bowl off stump. I said, he will sweep from outside off. Midwicket is up, just bowl him a straight offbreak, a bit quicker. If it stays straight he could be leg-before, if he hits it, he hits it." He tried to sweep and missed it, a dot ball.
Duminy got a single off the next, bringing Amla back on strike, on 98, three balls left in the over. The fourth was a dot, Ajmal following Amla's movement as he backed away. The fifth was the original plan, though probably a little wider than intended. Amla still couldn't get it away.
"He panicked a little, nine needed and it was ball to ball, the panic button was on. Saeed can also panic, of course. So I said to him, if I was a batsman at this stage, I would not be looking for a single, I will look for a boundary, a big shot. Because nine runs off eight [actually seven], however big a batsman, he is under pressure now.
"Now he will not try to hit over cover, he will go for a big shot. So I said, now you have to give him a doosra from middle and leg, because now he will hit it. He bowled it and Amla skied it straight up [to be caught halfway to the boundary]."
Pakistan won eventually by a run, sealing a first ODI series win in South Africa and the first by a subcontinent side in the country.
Fast, slow?
No Pakistani captain has relied as heavily on spin as Misbah, not even Miandad, who, usually in Imran's absence and at home, was happy to rely on them. Fifty-nine per cent of the wickets taken under Misbah have been by spin; 58% of the overs bowled by spinners. In that, he is an outlier among Pakistan's major captains. Corresponding percentages for Abdul Kardar, Imran and Miandad are, in order: 23% of wickets and 33% of overs; 29% of wickets and 36% of overs; 46% of wickets and 48% of overs.
Sitting down, Misbah illustrated the movement he intended to elicit from Broad, a jerky, panicked jab down to the ball, the aim being to prevent it from hitting his toes or stumps but now scrambled by the lack of pace and flight
To a degree it has been thrust upon him by circumstance: as much by the attack that was left to him once he took over as by the surfaces on which Pakistan played "home" Tests. Had he the Mohammads, Amir and Asif, who knows how his captaincy would have played out. But because he is a captain who understands so well the angles to which the game is played, and the consequences of tweaking them to tiny degrees, his handling of spinners has mostly suggested he was born for it.
He insisted he is as comfortable with fast bowlers, though he let slip a perhaps natural caution in expanding: "If a guy is bowling with control and he knows where the ball is going and how much it is swinging, then it becomes easy. It becomes difficult when the ball is not being controlled, or it is swinging both ways too much, or if he is struggling with line and length."
Control - not conceding runs - is vital to Misbah and it is his spinners who have always given him utmost control. Consequently, in the absence of Asif and Amir, and other than in a few phases, Misbah has sometimes come across as intrinsically untrusting of fast bowlers. He was, for instance, so despondent at the prospect of playing three fast bowlers in the first Test against England last month (Shah was injured, with no back-up) that it felt as if he had conceded the Test before it even began.
He has had his moments with them, though. He remembered the dismissal of Dinesh Chandimal in the second innings of the famous Sharjah Test last year. Mohammad Talha had bowled especially well on what was basically a strip of quicksand, and was brought into the attack with a 38-over-old ball. Misbah, at mid-off, had been watching Chandimal grow in confidence and told Talha to bowl a bouncer into his body. Talha did and Chandimal awkwardly ducked under it. He bowled a length ball outswinger next, which Chandimal left.
"Now he says, next ball I will bowl another outswinger. I said, 'Outswing and bouncer he is ready to leave. So from some way out, bring the ball in a little to get him to play a forward defensive.' It was reversing a little. I thought because of the bouncer, his weight will stay back a little. He will not come forward properly or fully. If you land it on a good spot, even if there is a tiny gap, he's gone."
It went as Misbah said, though it was helped by the size of the gap Chandimal left. (It is worth noting the degree to which Misbah can be involved in constructing overs, ball by ball, with his bowlers.)
Fifty-nine per cent of the wickets taken under Misbah have been by spin © AFPA bigger tapestry to draw upon is Pakistan's working over of Jonathan Trott in the UAE. In a Test series marked by the control Pakistan's spinners exerted over England's batting, Trott being dismissed by pace in three innings out of six was almost anomalous (and more so than for anyone else in the top seven). Sure, at one-down he was always likelier to face fast bowlers than others but there was an undeniable pattern to the dismissals. Misbah and Pakistan had picked up on an imbalance in the Trott shuffle.
"He plays on the move lots and the shuffle was always towards off stump and a little moving forward. The back foot does not go back and across, it moves up a little. It is a different shuffle, so the ball that is pulled wide a little, he tries to drive it, he tries to get close to it.
"Whenever you bowl outside off to him, short-of-a-length ball, he will be on the move, weight going forward, and that gives you a chance. If you give him one towards his body [motions at his ribs], he will be playing that. Sometimes when he moved forward to try and play to leg, he would be a leg-before shout, and he hit so many through midwicket. So we noticed and thought that because he walks towards off, we bowl short of length and either cramp him [at his body], or just outside off. Only the odd ball towards pads. But however much he walks out, you pull him even further so that he plays on the move. We knew spin was our strength, but with him we thought, he will chase a ball outside off, or even a short ball past his ribs."
Trott's three dismissals to pace: the first, moving across and strangled down the leg side to a short ball; the second, chasing a short-of-length delivery far outside off; and the last, leg-before to one swinging into his pads. Trott's technical troubles with the short ball came to wider attention in 2013, in encounters with Mitchell Johnson, and it ended his career. But in the relative anonymity of Dubai, long before, Pakistan had already worked him out.
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After a while Misbah was recalling all kinds of little plans and plots without prompting. Each time there was a conversational pause, on the verge of blossoming into an awkward silence, he thought of another, like the two dismissals of Alastair Cook in the second Test in Dubai.
To Misbah, runs are gold dust. He plans for wickets by not giving away runs, not by setting unusual fields or asking his bowlers to do anything fancy or cute
As with the Bairstow googly, they revealed Misbah's understanding of batsmanship but also a mental nimbleness. The plan was for Shah to attack the rough from round the wicket to Cook, with a man at 45 for the sweep. But Misbah sensed at one point that Cook was well set - "paka hua hai" - so he brought in a leg slip and Shah went over. Cook was gone almost immediately, caught there by Ahmed Shehzad.
In the second innings, he reversed it. Shah began at Cook from over the wicket. But during the drinks break before his next over, Misbah asked him to switch, to what was their original first-innings plan. "I said, 'Bowl to him from round, where he plays well.' Yasir said, 'No, this is our plan, this is what we stick to.' My thinking was that the sweep is his pet shot, he has confidence in it. But this is a fourth-day pitch, the rough is greater, he will hit but he might top-edge. As soon as he went there, he top-edged.
"Sometimes you see when a batsman is set on a plan, you want to mess with his mind a little. You see patterns, so you want to make him play differently, when there are chances of mistakes."
One of the more striking descriptions he used was for the body position he wanted to force David Warner into, in the second innings of the Dubai Test last year. Warner scored a hundred in the first and was playing well in the second. Misbah told Zulfiqar Babar, with a relatively new ball, to go round the wicket, convincing him to leave cover vacant. "From this angle if you bowl middle, you'll get drift and baazoo nahin khulenge [his shoulders won't open fully, or move freely] while trying to force a shot. He tried to do exactly that, to force one through covers, missed it - ball went with the angle straight past him and he got stumped."
Shoulder-charged: in Dubai last year David Warner was stumped from a delivery bowled round the wicket and pitched on middle stump © Getty ImagesNone of this is to paint Misbah as a unique and extraordinarily innovative tactician. Captaincy doesn't work to such simple descriptions. His reading of batsmen is notable, but most captains would - or could - make some of these moves. And any captain still has to have the bowlers to succeed.
If anything, an alternative (and not incorrect) interpretation would be that Misbah is extremely fortunate in having the bowlers he has had. Nor is he a solitary decision-maker. Ideas come from unexpected places. In Pallekele this summer, Misbah pointed out, it was Shan Masood who suggested bowling Azhar Ali at Dimuth Karunaratne in the second innings, because his googly would trouble him. Azhar had Karunaratne stumped - off the googly - and he took another wicket next ball, fortuitously, for good measure.
But Misbah is rare in the tradition of Pakistan captains, in that very few will recall and then want to talk about such details. Miandad, maybe Mushtaq Mohammad; and Miandad will segue effortlessly into a list of all the injustices enacted upon him. And also, it is worth reminding ourselves that being calm and equanimous doesn't win matches, not directly anyway. It doesn't make you your country's most successful captain. It is these moves, made every few overs, sometimes every few deliveries, that are the real debris of a captaincy.
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