Cricket - This business called Elite Honesty

Osman Samiuddin in Cricinfo

Here is some elite honesty, a very elite example of it. Australia 238 for 5 against Pakistan in Hobart, needing another 131 for the win. Justin Langer, on 76, edges behind to Moin Khan but is not given by the umpire Peter Parker. Doesn't walk. Fine. That's the difference between elite honesty and regular honesty, understanding that it's the umpire's job to make a batsman walk.

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On Walking - Advice for a Fifteen Year Old

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Langer's dad asks him about the edge. Nah, no edge, just a clicky bat handle. He tells his partner on the field and good mate Adam Gilchrist the same thing. Even his captain, elite honesty manifest as human, his mentor and idol, he tells him it was the clicky bat handle that dunnit.

These are elite mates and elite family, who deserve a bit of elite honesty and that's what Langer gives them. For the next decade and a half, this elite honesty is maintained. Then one day he downgrades it to mere honesty and reveals that he had smashed the hell out of the ball. He couldn't help it. He'd copped a bad one in the first innings. He was under the pump for his place. But while it lasted, the honesty was really elite.

If that was the only time you were elitely honest, then how elitely honest could you really be? Not very. So here's another quality bit of elite honesty. Notice how upright Langer is as he walks up to the stumps while fielding. The ball is dead and Hashan Tillakaratne in his crease. Langer deliberately tips a bail off the stumps and then watches his elite team-mates appeal for hit-wicket.

That we can identify this as elite honesty is only thanks to the ICC and their match referee Chris Broad. "Justin was disappointed that the charge was brought and explained his position in a very honest and succinct way," said Broad, following a hearing. You might call Broad's decision elite stupidity but I certainly won't. It's elite judgement.

Some say there is also elite honesty in how Langer ran Western Australia and Perth Scorchers, but I think the most elite example of elite honesty comes from Langer's idol, the true father of the modern Australian way. In a recent interview with Steve Waugh, our very own Melinda Farrell broached this idea of elite honesty (though we called it culture then). She asked Waugh about a couple of catches from his career that he dropped but claimed.

How do you look back at them now?

"Well, I don't really," Waugh responded, which is absolutely rule No. 1 in maintaining elite honesty. About the catch ("catch" used here in a way that also indicates drops) to dismiss Brian Lara, he continued: "It's just part of the game. I mean, at the time I still remember the catch. I still believe I caught it. It was inconclusive but in my mind it bounced off my wrist, but you know, that's all life. You don't want to look back at stuff. I try to look forward. You know, people have their own opinions on what happened there but I'm not going to change my opinion. My opinion was I caught it on the day."

You see why this is more elite? You understand? It's because from his response we end up learning something. We learn that catches are opinions, not facts. If your opinion is that the catch was good, then what business does the fact that it was a drop have anything to do with it? If you're asking yourself how you've managed life so far not abiding by these rules, console yourself that you're not alone. As the great man says, that's all life.

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Us mortals alas, we aspire to mere honesty. Non-elite stuff. Proletariat. So here, humbly and hopefully, is some of it. 

This business of elite honesty - and Langer's elite mateship and elite humility - this is all elite BS. So is the Players' Pact. And the "hard but fair" act. It's classic corporate-speak - high-sounding words put together to sound and look pretty but that end up meaning nothing.

We're not talking about airplane seats where even economy can now be premium. Honesty is honesty. You either are or you aren't. There is no elite level to which you and I are not welcome and only Australian cricketers are. The truth is, and if it is not, then it is a lie; no number of demagogue leaders, politicians or cricket captains are going to change this fact (not opinion). In today's world, more and more people might not be accepting the truth, but that says something about a changing people and society, not the truth.

All that these words do is maintain the pretence that Australian cricketers operate - or should operate - on a higher moral plane than non-Australian cricketers; that the Australian line is the line, never mind that nobody's ever been told where that line is. It is what has got them into this mess in the first place.

It is what the extreme punishments to Steven Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were so much about. The rest of the cricket world was made to look like a collective of tree-hugging liberal halfwits for having - fairly maturely, actually - come to terms with what is an on-field code violation and not a sign of moral decay. Sides tampered with the ball, sometimes they got caught and were punished and yes, sometimes they got away with it. That's all life.

Cricket, though, reactionary and conservative cricket, fell for it, responding by increasing the seriousness and stigma of tampering as an offence. Instead of doubling down, cooling the atmosphere, and insisting that tampering wasn't an existential threat to the game, it went the other way, aspiring to this elite Australian way.

It was a depressing reminder of the way cricket is still unable to drag itself out of the streak of puritanism that has marked its operations for so long, where it believes it is not just a morally superior game but that it produces morally superior humans. That's the subtext of the Spirit of Cricket, which, lately Australia seem to have clung to tighter than others. But here's a truth bomb for all of us: cricket isn't morally superior to anything. If it ever was, maybe it was nearly two centuries ago. It's a great sport, no doubt, but that is all it is - a sport. If it expanded globally in reality, rather than just in an ICC mission paper, it may well loosen up and understand this.

What Langer's words and the set of associated ideas among which they float - about the exceptionalism of Australian cricketers - do is set Australia up, at some point down the line, for another fall and greater unpopularity. Look at the sniggering already - magnificently played, by the way, Graeme Smith. Imagine now the next time one of them stuffs up, delivers a nasty sledge, or bullies an umpire, or tampers, or surreptitiously tips over a bail, or claims a dropped catch, or doesn't walk when he's out.

Of course it'll happen. They may be Australian cricketers but - and here's the big reveal - they are also human. They are humans like the rest of the cricketers they play with and against, ones who also do all of these things occasionally, ones they used to always beat and now ones they don't beat so often. They are humans like the rest of us who watch them, envy them, criticise them and worship them; humans who are fallible; humans who are striving for some regular honesty, sometimes succeeding but other times failing.

To this eye, and perhaps many others, all Australian cricket should stand for is Australian cricket, because that has always been more than enough. The way their openers and one-downs come at you, the way they don't stop producing super-fast fast bowlers, the way their keepers yap and catch, the way their slips stand chewing gum like they're a street gang, the way they think leggies are the normal ones and offies the ones to be suspicious of, the way their grounds can feel simultaneously so big and so small, and the way no game is over for them until the very last of them has physically sat on the bus and left the stadium. It has never needed any buzzwords or catchphrases beyond that.

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.

Good friends are hard to find – and even harder to keep

If millions of us have no mates it could be because enduring friendships require care and humility

• 
• • Tim Lott
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 13 August 2014

‘A significant number of ordinary people just don’t know how to maintain good friendships.’ Photograph: Pierre Desrosiers/Getty Images

A survey by Relate rather shockingly suggests that as many as 10% of people in the UK don’t have a single friend to turn to. That translates into nearly 5 million adults who are, in effect, friendless.

Even factoring in that many of these unfortunates may be elderly people whose friends have died, or inadequates who lack functional social skills, that is still a significant number of ordinary people who just don’t know how to maintain good friendships.
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One in 10 do not have a close friend and even more feel unloved 

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I am fortunate to be able to claim at least four friends, of both genders, who stretch back nearly 40 years, and a number of other more recent ones that are close and durable. But I have also lost enough to understand that friendships are difficult, and the closer they are the more difficult they become. This is also true of family relationships, but it’s very hard to escape your family. With friends, if you annoy them too much, they can just drop you. Within this simple fact lies one of the first principles of friendship – tread carefully. Friends are precious, even irreplaceable, but they are also fragile.

Treading carefully is easier said than done. Part of a good friendship is honesty, and sooner or later one is forced to choose between being amenable and giving a friend the honesty you think the relationship merits. But honesty is always a risky strategy, whether it’s asking “Do you like my new dress/suit?” or “Do you like my new girlfriend/boyfriend?” Sometimes you are forced to find out what your friendship rests on, and sometimes the foundations prove insubstantial.

Friendships can be rooted in a number of different impulses. Unhealthy elements like need, the desire for borrowed status, and the wish for flattery are as common as the more healthy ones like mutual interests, sense of humour and natural compatibility. The healthy and unhealthy are often mixed together, the latter concealed under the myth of “friendship”, which suggests, more than marriage, a certain (unrealistic) perfection of sensibility.

The thing with friends is that because they tend to be bit-players in one’s life – “let’s meet for drinks/a meal/a game/a movie” – it’s easy to build up a false idea about someone with whom you share a friendly relationship.

Generalisations along gender lines are always tricky, but – and this is a purely personal observation – I think women sometimes struggle with friendship in the long run as they seem to have an unspoken pact that a friend should always be supportive. They just invest so much in each other. Men often accept a little grit in the ointment – one can tell a male friend to fuck off without losing his friendship. Female friendships can struggle when the faults in either party begin to surface. Friends, like marriage partners, love each other, but they must also be allowed to hate each other sometimes.

I do not know what I am doing right to have kept such good friends for so long, but it is certainly worth pointing out that none of them have got to the present point without negotiating moments of crisis. In each of my closest friends there have been moments when the friendship has nearly foundered – but we somehow came through them to a relationship that was stronger than it was before the crisis.

The nature of friendship changes, and you have to change with it. Once, hopefully, I fascinated my friends and charmed them. After 40 years, I am sure I often bore them – and that is inevitable. A good friendship, like a good marriage, ceases after a while to be a mutual entertainment society and becomes instead a sorority or fraternity of battle-scarred veterans. We are still here, we still enjoy being around each other, and we treasure our shared histories. This is something precious, even if it isn’t always a laugh riot.

Is there a secret to long friendships? Simply this – an absence of pride. Too many falter on stubbornness or the determination to hold on to offence. Successful ones rely on humility and the recognition of human fallibility. These are not merely useful attributes. They are the heart and soul of friendship.

What's behind team spirit?

Martin Crowe in Cricinfo

New Zealand gelled as a team int he 1992 World Cup but splintered thereafter © Getty Images

Teamwork, team spirit, team culture, team dynamics - all buzzwords that point to the same thing. Yet in truth it is the team "functionability" that must work if success is to be achieved and a legacy created. Sports teams are no different to business teams, except sport is played out in public and each individual player is under scrutiny, as much as the team's performance is.

In reality, most teams fail, if winning a championship or event or being ranked No. 1 is the measure they are judged by. Those few fortunate enough to hold the trophy aloft, let alone do it often and frequently, like the once all-conquering Manchester United, or the Australian cricket team of yesteryear, they are the ones that come together as one. As d'Artagnan famously said, "All for one and one for all."

There are thousands of opinions, hundreds of books, case studies and manuals on the subject worldwide. There are many ways to skin a cat. Yet really, when all is said and done, it is the simple methods of how people function best in everyday life that need to be executed in a sporting team environment. It comes down to how our relationships work in any form of life, and this points always to the ability to love, to talk, to listen and to commit. In short, to relate.

In my years of experiencing the good and the bad in relationships and teams, studying others, reading lots, and hearing grand and sad stories in all kinds of endeavour, the one thing that stands out more than anything is building and maintaining trust.

Trust stems from a willingness to openly share anything and everything. It is about not being afraid to show vulnerability, admitting mistakes and weaknesses, and generally and genuinely sharing the truth outwardly and honestly among the group. Trust rules the lot.

When it is not built, or is broken, then the essence of the team's functionality is lost. Great leaders and captains have been able to rely on this trust, once established, as the cornerstone to team success.

	Australia have always had the ability to work together even if one or two of the personalities clashed

Ian Chappell, the great Australian captain, would easily speak his mind, using his open-door policy style, by buying his team-mates a beer and sitting them down at the bar, loosening them up a little and getting a natural flow of conversation bedded in. He was famous for building that trust within his all-conquering team of the '70s by simply using straight honest talking and listening. In this he helped create the environment to challenge and debate with each other.

This is incredibly healthy, the key being that the trust generated leads to open challenging discussions and passionate debate based on respect. It doesn't mean you have to hold hands when doing so, just simply to speak your truth "out in the open", be heard, and take time to listen in turn. The worst thing is to speak your truth behind the backs of the team, in particular to the media and opposition. This kills trust, and it kills the desire to continue to share. Once trust and openness are broken, there is no chance going forward.

If the first two are working well, it will go a long way to solving any commitment issues. Committing or buying into the team's work is about the desire to go to great lengths to perform your specialist role for your team's benefit. When team members are allowed to share the truth, there is a natural tendency to buy in to committing wholeheartedly to the decisions made by the team's leaders.

Without commitment there is no accountability. When all are in, it becomes easier to call team members on actions and behaviours that will assist the team cause. When accountability becomes understood, then so too is the need to focus attention to the goals and results of the team. Accountability removes the individual needs, like personal recognition and ego, from the equation.

Australia had a great handle on this with their dominance through most of the 1990s and much of the following decade. They have always had that ability to work together even if one or two of the personalities clashed. This was the open positive conflict working well. West Indies, under Clive Lloyd, showed a real theme to their togetherness, small nations becoming one, and they displayed a spirit unrivalled for 15 long years.

Through the '80s, New Zealand had a mixture of good and bad, but mainly positive functionality. Sometimes there was a lack of attention to team results and accountability, but overall there was an enduring trust, openness and commitment.

	West Indies, under Clive Lloyd, showed a real theme to their togetherness - small nations becoming one © PA Photos  Enlarge

In my term as a Test captain, I didn't allow for enough open debate and sharing, and so we had little trust to start with, and the rest of the dysfunctions followed. My failure was in not generating enough open conflict to ensure everyone had a say, bought in, and truly committed. However, it did come slowly, so by the time of the 1992 World Cup, we had nearly all five functions working smoothly.

Sadly, rather than building on that success, we splintered dramatically, the catalyst being the bomb blast outside our hotel in Colombo in late 1992, an incident that split the team in two when six players and the coach, with families at home, left the tour. From then, as a team, we were damaged goods. Administrators got involved, wrongly, and developed hideous resentment. Over just a few months all the trust we had garnered started to evaporate.

By February 1993, factions were everywhere and our team dynamic was dead. The coach, Wally Lees was sacked for very little reason. Mark Greatbatch was inexplicably replaced as vice-captain, and therefore I lost my trusted lieutenant, and before long, after just one more Test in charge, my tenure as skipper was over too. The team spirit suffered.

My last seven Tests, as a mere batsman not knowing how to retire, were the saddest of all that I played, as I watched a team pretend it existed. There wasn't one ounce of trust. That positive team dynamic never rose again for New Zealand until Stephen Fleming began his own team-building with a young bunch of mates and an experienced and inspirational management, from 1998 to 2003.

The point is, anything can disrupt the dynamic, and so it's vital that whatever happens, or whoever comes into the group, the five functions must be quickly and often referred to: Motivation for maintaining the flow of attention to results; accountability; commitment; open, honest and respectful conflict; and sharing truths - these make the lifeblood of a team's fulfilment and longevity.

Six of the best: the traits your child needs to succeed

Hilary Wilce in The Independent

What makes a child do well in school? When I ask parents that question, they always have lots of great answers: a high IQ, a terrific school, well-run lessons, skilled teachers, a creative curriculum, high expectations.

Although all these things help, the real secret of great learning lies elsewhere – inside children themselves. Increasingly, researchers are discovering that what children bring to the classroom matters every bit – and in many ways more – than what the classroom can offer them.

Children with the attitude and disposition that encourage good learning will flourish even in a mediocre school, while those who come with a mindset that hampers learning won't be able to make much of even the best educational opportunities.

Numerous studies in the US and elsewhere show that test scores leap, often by more than 10 per cent, when children are encouraged to develop good attitudes towards themselves and their learning. As a result, schools around the world are starting to offer programmes to help their students develop key character strengths.

A recent "positive education" conference at Wellington College in Berkshire drew participants from America, Singapore and Australia to discuss how teachers can help students "grow" their inner cores.

But parents have been left out of this learning loop, and often don't realise that there is far more to securing a good education for their children than simply bagging a place at the best school in the neighbourhood – schools and teachers can only turn children into terrific learners if those children's parents are laying down the foundations at home that will encourage pupils to step up to the challenges of the classroom.

There is growing evidence that character traits such as resilience, persistence, optimism and courage actively contribute to improved academic grades. And there are six key qualities that parents can foster in their children that will help them do their very best in school. These are:

1. Joie de vivre

The ability to love and appreciate life might sound wishy-washy in the hard world of exam results, but love and security feed a host of qualities that great learners need. These include the ability to be open and receptive, to be willing and to feel connected.

Meanwhile, cultivating an attitude of appreciation means being able to enjoy the journey of learning, wonder at nature, relish a good story, feel good about achievements, and enjoy the companionship of the classroom. All of which, in turn, feed confidence, excitement and curiosity back into the learning loop.

2. Resilience

For years, resilience has been known to be essential for great learning. Martin Seligman, the US psychology professor who has studied this extensively, has shown that it helps children think more flexibly and realistically, be more creative and ward off depression and anxiety.

Resilient children give things a try. They understand that learning has plenty of setbacks and that they can overcome them. Resilient children talk to themselves differently from non- resilient ones, and don't turn mistakes into catastrophes ("I've failed my maths test, it's a disaster. I'll never get maths!"). Instead, they look at a wider, more positive picture ("Ugh, that was a horrible test, and I screwed up, but I didn't do enough work. Next time I'll do more revision, and it'll probably be a better paper as well").

3. Self-discipline

There are many famous pieces of research that show that children's ability to control their impulses appears to lead to better health, wealth and mental happiness in later life. In school, self-discipline is central.

Great learners need to listen, absorb and think. They need to keep going through difficult patches, stick at hard tasks, manage their time well and keep mental focus. Children who bounce about the classroom shouting the first answer that comes into their heads will never be great learners.

Of course, a joyless, overly controlled child will never be one either. Balance matters. All children need to develop a functioning "internal locus of control".

4. Honesty

Honesty matters for great learning because its opposites – deception and self-deception – hinder progress. Great learners don't say "I'm brilliant at science" but, "I'm OK on photosynthesis, but not sure I've nailed atomic structure yet." And this needs to start early.

The pre-schooler who speaks up and asks what a word means in a story, rather than pretending to know, is already on the way to being a skilful learner. Honesty allows children to build good links with teachers and mentors. It grows confidence, attracts goodwill, and gives children an infallible compass with which to steer their learning.

5. Courage

Learning anything – piano, physics, tennis – is about approaching the unknown, and stepping up to new challenges. Great learners are just as frightened of this as others, but can overcome their fear and find focus.

They are able to try, fail, and try again. They can also navigate school life skilfully. Children need moral courage to turn away from distractions and to be willing to be seen as "a geek" if they want to study, while developing courage also helps them to stand their ground through the temptations of the teenage years.

6. Kindness

Great learners are kind to themselves. They understand that learning is sometimes hard, and not always possible to get right, but keep a "good" voice going in their heads to encourage themselves on.

A kind disposition also draws other people to them and bolsters their learning through the help and support of others, as well as allowing them to work productively in teams and groups. A kind disposition also feeds listening and empathy, which in turn foster deeper, more complex learning.

All these character qualities are great for learning – and also for life. Research shows that they help people build more confidence, face challenges better, earn more money, have more satisfying careers, build stronger relationships, and keep depression and anxiety at bay. Yet, sadly, figures also show that increasing numbers of children are growing up with less ability to control their moods, direct their actions, or show empathy and self-mastery, while many mental health problems, including eating disorders and self-harm, are on the rise.

Our children badly need us to help them develop stronger, more flexible backbones, and all the qualities that contribute to a strong inner core can be actively fostered and encouraged by parents (parents and schools working together is even better). Just as muscles grow stronger with regular exercise, so character traits are strengthened by thoughtful encouragement and reinforcement.

Hilary Wilce is an education writer, consultant and parent coach. Her new book, 'Backbone: How to Build the Character Your Child Needs to Succeed' (Endeavour Press, £2.99) is now available

On Peter Roebuck by a former student

Fabian Muir

I met Peter Roebuck at boarding school when I was nine years old. It was his first summer in Sydney, having come from England in the off season to teach at Cranbrook School, where he was also a tutor in the junior boarding house.

Even then it was clear that Peter was different. Although already playing for Somerset, this thin, bespectacled Englishman seemed more bookworm than sportsman.

He would wander the halls with his hands behind his back, admonishing boys for saying they were "good" rather than "well". When he was meant to be supervising the students, he could often be found on a nearby bench, his well-developed nose buried in a tome. In the boarding house, a hostile world in which a book-burning never seemed far away, this already marked him as eccentric.

His liking for the unorthodox was further underlined by his instant friendship with another tutor, Mr Griffiths, a nutty professor with messy hair, who played the organ like Lon Chaney and crunched on bulbs of garlic as others do on apples. To this young schoolboy, they were beacons in an otherwise bleak environment.

One holiday weekend I was the only boy left in the house and Peter was "master on duty", giving him the dubious distinction of supervising me for three days. In retrospect I think he used those days to test me.

First we went to a dusty tennis court to play cricket. Subcontinental conditions, no pads, hard ball. It was a scorching summer's day, the kind that exists only in a childhood memory. Peter faced my pale imitations of Dennis Lillee and graciously allowed me to dismiss him once or twice, but I would never be one of his leatherflingers.

When it was my turn to bat, he showed less mercy. He bowled spin unlike anything I had seen before, the ball fizzing through the air like a hornet and skittling me repeatedly. We repeated the exercise in the days that followed, but my enthusiasm outweighed my talent. I failed the test.

So he tried another route. Over dinner he asked me how I felt about War and Peace, a classic question to any nine-year-old. By chance I knew the story, having taken a fancy to Natasha Rostova after seeing the epic Russian film version with my father. Peter's eyes lit up with impish enthusiasm and he began to discuss the novel. He extolled the writing and expressed his own admiration for the character of Pierre. This makes sense to me now, for Pierre was also a seeker, slightly out of place everywhere, yet deeply sympathetic.

This was the way Peter operated. He would search out your strengths and weaknesses, then work on both.

Believing he had identified a strength of mine, he nurtured it in years to come, first with reading, later with writing. He would visit the dormitory and pass me "subversive" literature, samizdat-style, to help me on my way. Narziss and Goldmund was one. His standard greeting became, "Hello Fabes, what are you reading at the moment?" I had to have a good answer ready.

I did not understand it then, but in short he was becoming a mentor, a word mentioned often in the tributes that have flowed since his death. He was naturally suited to this role, because he came from that breed of teacher who takes a genuine interest in individuals and thrills in their development. He cared.

His ability to build a very personal rapport made him born to share knowledge, be it in the classroom, on the field or in the commentary box. This is the reason why many readers and listeners felt they knew him, and this is the reason he went on to maintain contact with many students once they had completed their schooling. Our own friendship would last for over 30 years.

Mine was by no means an exceptional case. Peter built long-term friendships with a great number of former pupils, charting their growth and proud to think that he might have played a role. He often became close to their families as well. In reverse, we took equal pleasure observing Peter's own progress, first as a cricketer, coach and teacher, later as a writer, commentator and philanthropist.

Having had the benefit of reading the articles since his passing, it seems a number of professional colleagues found Peter somehow inaccessible. Many of his students and those he coached would feel differently. That is not to say they knew him fully, but it is possible that his guard was lower with people he had known from an early age.

By nature he was shy, but to say he was aloof or reclusive is to misunderstand the man. In fact the reverse was the case, for Peter's love for and curiosity about humanity gave him an insatiable appetite for new people and experience. Far from being withdrawn or, worse, elitist, he was in his element chatting to strangers. An Antiguan fruit seller, Mumbai chaiwallah or Sydney taxi driver - he would talk to anyone. More importantly, he treated them all as equals, honoured their opinions and feasted on their stories. He loved life's colour and different cultures, and understood that the big picture is about ordinary people, not celebrities. His pieces were more likely to contain a quote from his local Italian than from a player.

It was this humanist approach that so often set Peter's writing apart. It was this humanist approach that legitimised the decision to read the newspaper from the back page. Cricket, a dramatic sport that ruthlessly exposes a player's resolve and frailties, a sport that reveals more about the human condition than any other, was tailor-made for Peter's sensibilities.

Fascinated by the triumphs and follies of man, he was always trying to get beneath the surface and discover the causes. To meet him personally meant you had to be willing to answer a series of thoughtful, interested questions, which were sometimes direct but never intrusive. And he would absorb the answers. Often he would refer to remarks made during conversations that had taken place years earlier.

For those more accustomed to reading his columns and hearing his commentary, the skill of Roebuck the listener may come as a surprise. For it is a skill, an important one, especially in a world where so many people prefer to talk about themselves. Peter was a two-way street.

It seems he also had his demons. I never saw them. That he had made some mistakes is established fact. Sometimes he would make veiled references to the past, which showed that it had burdened, chastened and hurt him, but otherwise his view was to the future. It is possible that the charitable work he would go on to perform was in part born of a desire to wipe the slate clean.

	It was an unusual experience to arrive at Roebuck's front door - always wide open - and peer down the corridor. His clear voice would penetrate the gloom, after which his physical form would slowly materialise in the shadows like the Tardis. I quipped about this once and his response was typically elliptic: "Only moths need bright light"

Upon reflection, perhaps something could have been read into his Bondi home, which he kept in a state of almost complete darkness. It was an unusual experience to arrive at his front door - always wide open - and peer down the corridor while announcing one's arrival. His clear voice would penetrate the gloom, after which his physical form would slowly materialise in the shadows like the Tardis. I quipped about this once and his response was typically elliptic: "Only moths need bright light."

Certainly the good he achieved far outweighed any indiscretions, but the modesty of the man meant that the broader public was unaware of much of it. Only now are people learning of the hundreds of underprivileged children who received an education through his unstinting efforts, frequently at his own expense.

This was a natural extension of his first instinct, which was always to help. Often he would do so without even asking if help were needed. He began by helping privileged children in Sydney, but moved on to the far more meaningful task of youths from Zimbabwe and India.

I asked him not so long ago whether he missed having had a family. "What do you mean?" he retorted. "I have the best family a man could want, look here." He then, glowing with pride, fetched photos of a number of his "sons" in South Africa.

For, of itself, cricket had become too small for him. Not meaningless, just small. Around 2007 we were sitting in his backyard and he said that, having become pre-eminent in his field, he had nothing left to achieve in cricket and that "my priority now is helping these kids, that's how I can really change something". If he enjoyed charting the progress of his former pupils, then charting that of the former teacher was much more rewarding.

Another word that has been recurring since his passing is "complex". It is a dangerous pastime to analyse people who are no longer able to present their own view, but it is no doubt true that he combined many qualities that appeared to be at odds with one another. Sensitive yet tough; a maverick yet a stickler for tradition; humble yet intensely proud; a great success, but with no interest in wealth; a man of coruscating intelligence, but given to faints of unexpected vagueness; an introvert with the courage to bare his opinions before millions. He was, one might say, the Morrissey of cricket writing.

In many ways he was born out of his time. Nineteenth-century England might have suited him better, where he would have dined with Sir Richard Burton or been an envoy to the Khan of Samarkand.

Perhaps the key element of the "Roebuck conundrum" was that of a private and retiring individual becoming a public figure. Had he been able to choose, he quite likely would have eschewed the limelight, but it inevitably came with the territory. More usefully, it gave him access to certain people and opportunities to pursue his humanitarian goals.

Never did the limelight's glare find him more spectacularly than when he called for Ricky Ponting's sacking in 2008. We had dinner several weeks after the article appeared and it was noticeable that a number people stared as he entered the restaurant. "I've crossed the Rubicon," he said. "People now know who I am. That was never my intention." I asked what his intention had been. "To say what I thought at that moment." In other words, to do what he always did, often as a lone voice, come hell or high water.

Peter was at times criticised for supposed inconsistency in his articles, writing one thing one week, then something rather different down the line. He also softened on Ponting. What this really showed, however, was his willingness to reconsider his initial opinion, reshape it and even admit a mistake. The same exacting standards he imposed on others he imposed twofold on himself. This was honesty not hypocrisy, a strength not a weakness.

Why was he a mystery to many who knew him? Perhaps experience of how the English media can handle public figures had made him build his walls a little higher, even in Australia. But there was a gate in those walls, which had only to be lightly pushed. Those who passed through it found themselves in a quite extraordinary garden, which revealed something new with each visit. On the 13th I wept as I was forced to accept that I had seen that garden for the last time.

I could weep again now when I think of all the lines left unwritten. Instinctively the eyes of readers will search for his column and the ears of listeners will strain for his voice - the twitches of a phantom limb. Or more accurately, the gap he leaves will hurt like a pulled tooth.

An evening with Peter was always stimulating. The wine was usually cheap but the debate was champagne. 

His mind was incisive, his humour oblique; his idea of a good joke was to ask Prime Minister John Howard on air whether he did yoga.

More often than not, our discussions did not concern cricket, rather literature, travel or politics. Sometimes we talked about relationships and the beauty of Russian girls. I know of at least one woman whom Peter loved and lost.

We also discussed death on numerous occasions. He was not preoccupied with it, but he was intrigued by cricketers who fall into a hole and contemplate suicide upon conclusion of their playing careers. Not for him, however. He believed that the simple solution lay in finding a worthwhile and satisfying alternative, something he had surely managed for himself in several fields.

He did not rule out life after death. He considered this presumptuous, for there was too much unexplained in a miraculous universe, where everything seemed possible. At our last meeting this year, he had no intention of discovering the answer anytime soon, declaring, "Death is about confronting your own mortality, but I don't have this problem because my starting point is that I'm immortal!"

Tragic events have proven otherwise, with draining suddenness. Truly immortal, however, are his words, which cannot be wrenched away from us so brutally and will remain as a permanent gift to all.

Fabian Muir is an Australian writer now based in Berlin

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