Can the cricket coach be king?

The role is still evolving, but it's hard to see it become the centrepiece of the narrative like in football

Ed Smith in Cricinfo

March 3, 2014

 

	Micky Stewart (sitting, extreme right) was one of cricket's first coaches, but his role was more to support the captain than to be the man in charge © PA Photos  Enlarge

Where is cricket's Jose Mourinho, its Pep Guardiola, its Sir Alex Ferguson?

I intend no disrespect to cricket coaches. But the question is unavoidable. The football manager has evolved not only as the boss - the "gaffer" - but also the central and controlling mind. He is the team's selector, its tactician and its figurehead. Compare cricket's separation of powers, a three-way division of responsibility. The selectors determine which players get onto the field; the captain sets the field, declares and changes the bowling; while the coach - well, hang on a minute, what does the coach do? This second question partly answers my first one: the role of the coach leads us to the absence of Jose Mourinho.

The original football manager was Herbert Chapman, whose first job was at Northampton Town in 1907. He pioneered a new style of play, rebranded his teams (it was Chapman who termed Arsenal "the Gunners"), and signed players at lower prices by plying rival directors with alcohol while he sipped ginger ale from a whisky glass. No wonder his nickname was "Football's Napoleon". That tradition of managerial control continues to this day. Arsenal's club captain is Thomas Vermaelen. You may not have noticed because he very rarely makes the team. The manager, Arsene Wenger, in contrast, is ever-present.

With occasional exceptions - meddling owners, egotistical chairmen, exceptional captains - there is no doubt who runs a football team: the manager. This has long made them the envy of the coaching fraternity. When the Welsh rugby visionary Carwyn James, who coached the British Lions, was asked if he had any regrets, he replied that he would have liked to be a football manager instead: they didn't have to put up with the interference of selectors.

Cricket didn't even have coaches when James was shaping his teams in the 1970s, let alone Chapman his in the 1910s. English cricket's first full-time professional coach was Micky Stewart, who took over as team manager for the 1986-87 tour of Australia. But Stewart and his generation of coaches were managers in name, not reality. They were more organisers than bosses. David Lloyd, who succeeded Stewart in the England job, put it like this: "The captain ruled the roost, he was the boss really, and you were there to support him. So I wouldn't cross either of the captains I worked with, Atherton or Stewart."

So history, clearly, is part of the explanation. The cricket coach is relatively new. There has not yet been much time for cricket's pioneering coaches to expand and enhance the role. One perfectly plausible projection is that cricket will become more like other sports and a single manager will assume control of the central decisions. Michael Vaughan believes that selectors are now superfluous and their role should been ceded to the coach. Sir Clive Woodward, who coached England to the rugby World Cup, recently accused cricket of being "stuck in the dark ages", with an over-mighty captain and a weak manager. Woodward was baffled that English cricket could sack Kevin Pietersen before the appointment of a new coach. Surely, Woodward argued, that decision was for the coach, not the captain and administrators? This line of argument holds that the cricket coach is still taking infant steps towards its logical evolution and that - in a decade or two - the coach will be king.

	A football coach can alter the effect of individual players by tinkering with the structure in which they operate. Cricket, in contrast, is the accumulation of what statisticians call "discrete" events, actions that occur in a comparative vacuum

There is a counter argument. Ian Chappell and Shane Warne, among others, believe that the cricket coach should be held in check rather than allowed to launch a power grab. At international level, in Warne's words, "the coach shouldn't be coaching." The coach can certainly help create the right environment. But the Warne-Chappell approach remains suspicious of interventionist technical coaching once players have reached Test level. They believe it must be the captain, not the coach, who runs the team on the field.

This is the nub of the issue. Is there something about cricket, almost unique among sports, that makes it harder (perhaps impossible) for a coach to shape what happens during the match? We know it is the baseball manager who pulls off the pitcher and replaces him with a fresher arm. We know it is the football manager who devises the playing system and structure for each match. Why not cricket?

We now run into a parallel question: how central is captaincy? For if the coach wishes to become the defining figure, he can assume selection control from the selectors, but tactics he must wrestle from the captain. As a teenager, I was 12th man for Kent in a one-day match. I organised the drinks bottles while sitting next to the coach. When Kent took a wicket and I prepared to run onto the pitch, the coach pulled me to one side. "Tell the captain to change the bowling at the far end and move mid-off deeper. And tell him that has come from me!" I relayed the message. "Tell the coach to f*** off and let me captain the team," the captain replied, "and tell him that's from me." It was an early lesson in a familiar confusion about roles and responsibilities.

The structure of cricket may work against an off-field mastermind, certainly in the longer formats of the game. In a five-day match, the coach can only directly speak to his players at lunch, tea or the close of play. During each session, the captain must make his own decisions - as Bob Woolmer discovered when his coach-to-captain walkie-talkie system was outlawed in 1999. It is possible to imagine a T20 match mapped out in advance because there are only a small number of bowling changes to make. But a Test match is so fluid and unpredictable, with so many moving parts interacting and influencing each other, that a "planned" Test is a contradiction in terms.

In other respects cricket is anything but fluid. The ball is "live" in cricket for a very small percentage of the match. And for the vast majority of that time, only two or three players are involved: the bowler, the batsmen and sometimes a fielder. Crucially, their individual actions take place in perfect isolation. No one else can help you hit a cover drive or bowl a yorker. This truth is captured by the old cliché that cricket is a team game played by individuals.

That makes it very different from football. When an attacking player tracks back, the job of being a defender becomes fundamentally easier. When a coach devises a different midfield formation, the experience of being out on the pitch materially changes. The spaces are in different places, so it becomes a changed match. Not so in cricket. A coach (or captain) can change his batting order. But no coach can soften or alter the isolated examination that awaits all the batsmen when they eventually face Mitchell Johnson's thunderbolts. You can shuffle the pack, but the cards must be played individually.

This is the greatest challenge facing a cricket coach. A football coach can alter the effect of individual players by tinkering with the structure in which they operate. The presence of a good defensive midfielder frees up the playmaker to push up-field and express himself. Just ask the playmaker. When Real Madrid sold the defensive midfielder Claude Makelele and bought David Beckham instead, Zinedine Zidane felt the pinch. "Why put another layer of gold paint on the Bentley," asked Zidane, "when you are losing the entire engine?" These are managerial judgements, decisions about structure and strategy that affect almost every moment of a football match. Cricket, in contrast, is the accumulation of what statisticians call "discrete" events, actions that occur in a comparative vacuum.

Paradoxically, this makes it harder for cricket coaches to influence the shape of the match. They come up against an impenetrable wall: every player, with bat or ball, is on his own when it really matters. This, I suspect, is why cricket coaches, during periods of desperate failure, are so often reduced to the worst of all managerial failings: telling their players how to bat and bowl. It almost never works, but you can see how they end up there.

By my own logic, cricket coaching could evolve in either of two opposite directions. Given the technical and individual nature of the game, the trend may be towards individual coaches who work for the player, rather than vice versa - exactly as already happens in golf and tennis. Alternatively, cricket may eventually accept a version of the football model, despite its structural differences. One thing is certain. Unless that happens - and I'm not sure it should - I can't see a cricketing Jose Mourinho putting up with the constraints of the job. After all, pity the poor chief selector who relays the following message, "Jose, here's the team we've picked for you to play against Manchester City."

Free Lunches - Modi's Crony Capitalism

Lola Nayyar in Outlook India

During the Vibrant Gujarat summit in 2011, Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi was seen being venerated by the bigwigs of Indian industry, from Ratan Tata to Mukesh Ambani, for his grand vision of dev­elopment. It figures. The development model has increasingly come to be skewed in favour of capital-intensive mega industries.

This is evident not just in project allocation but also in terms of resources, be it finances, subsidies, land or natural wealth. If Adani tops the list of Modi’s favourites in popular perception, the Ambanis, Tatas, Essar, Torrent Power follow closely. Many like Welspun, Zydus Cadila, Nirma, Lalbhais etc are giving way to others as front-runners for subsidies that are huge by any standard, whether capital subsidy, interest subsidy, infrastructure subsidy, sales tax and now VAT subsidy. The capital is being provided at just 0.1 per cent interest with an average of a 20-year moratorium on repayment, stretched in some cases to over 40 years. Besides land, water and other natural resources come at throwaway prices.

A rough calculation of the subsidy the Tatas effectively got to set up their Nano manufacturing plant in Gujarat pegs it at around Rs 33,000 crore, say local politicians. “Historica­lly, the Gujarat model was to promote smes in backward areas, but over the years premier, prestigious and now mega industries are being promoted in the state. Starting from the Tatas’ Nano project, the share of subsidy and incentives has become tilted in favour of mega projects—the greater the investment, the greater is the rate of subsidy,” says Prof Indira Hirway of the Centre for Development Alternatives, Ahmedabad.

Because competitive forces do not dictate the allocation of resources, favours determine the slice of the cake. This has resulted in the suboptimal allocation of resources. As capital has become cheaper, it has become more profitable for corporates to go in for capital-intensive industries with little emp­loyment generation. The huge outgo in corporate and infrastructure subsidies has also meant few resources are left for social development, whether health or education.

“Modi seems to practise a lot of crony capitalism, but knows very little about capitalism, which involves liberalism and spiritualism—none of which applies to him,” says Rajiv Desai, CEO of Comma Consulting.

Industrial growth in Gujarat, going by the  last two audit reports of state psus by the Comptroller and Auditor General, is coming at a high cost to the exchequer. In 2012, the CAG took a critical view of the Modi government’s mismanagement resulting in losses of over Rs 16,000 crore.

In the case of the state-owned Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC), the audit report is critical of “undue benefits” extended to favoured corporates like Adani Energy and Essar Steel. The report points out that GSPC purchased natural gas from the spot market at the prevailing prices and sold it to Adani Energy at a fixed price much lower than the market price, benefiting the latter to the tune of over Rs 70 crore. To Essar Steel, the corpora­tion extended undue benefits of over Rs 12.02 crore by way of a waiver of capacity charges, contrary to the provisions of the gas transmission agreement.

Again in 2013, the CAG took a critical view of state public sector undertakings extending undue favours to Reliance Industries and Adani Power Ltd (APL). It highlighted a loss of Rs 52.27 crore due to a retweaking of the gas transportation agreement (GTA) with RIL for transportation of D6 gas from Bhadbhut in Bharuch district to RIL’s Jamnagar refinery.
In the case of Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Limited (GUVNL), over Rs 160 crore was lost by not levying a penalty on APL for violation of the power purchase agreement.

Experts point out how major projects in the state are increasingly being captured by a few favourite industrial groups, which have been witnes­sing faster than their average growth just a decade back. Paying the price is the aam aadmi. Take the sale of CNG in Ahmedabad. It’s more expensive than in Delhi despite the fact that most of the gas is transported via pipeline to the capital from Gujarat. A reason assigned by the locals is that the cng vending stations are largely operated by the Adanis.

In God we trust - all others bring data. The perils of data-driven cricket -

 

For all his triumphs as England coach, Andy Flower ultimately got the balance between trusting people and numbers wrong

Tim Wigmore in Cricinfo

March 2, 2014

 

Was Andy Flower ultimately empowered by data or inhibited by it? © PA Photos

Cricket is an art, not a science. It's a fact that needs restating after the disintegration of Andy Flower's reign as England coach. Slavery to data had gone too far. The triumphs of the more jocund Darren Lehmann, Flower's coaching antithesis, are a salutary reminder of the importance of fun and flair in a successful cricket team. And it's not only cricket that could learn from the tale.

Big data - the vogue term used to describe the manifold growth and availability of data, both structured and not - is an inescapable reality of the 21st century. There are 1200 exabytes of data stored in the world; translated, that means that, if it were all placed on CD-ROMs and stacked up, it would stretch to the moon in five separate piles, according to Kenneth Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schonberger's book Big Data. Day-to-day life can often feel like a battle to stay afloat against the relentless tide of data. One hundred and sixty billion instant messages were sent in Britain in 2013. Over 500 million tweets are sent worldwide every day.

Kevin Pietersen was the subject of a good number of those after his sacking as an England cricketer. Amid the cacophony of opinions, one voice we could have done without was David Cameron's; the prime minister gave a radio interview saying that there was a "powerful argument" for keeping the "remarkable" Pietersen in the team.

Cameron had once recognised the dangers of descending into a roving reporter, promising, "We are not going to sit in an office with the 24-hour news blaring out, shouting at the headlines." Downing Street's impulse to comment on the Pietersen affair is a manifestation of information overload at its worst: with so much space to fill, politicians feel compelled to fill it. The result is that they have less time to do their day jobs.

	Flower's reign, for the most part, showed the virtues of using data smartly. But data is emphatically not a substitute for intuition and flair - either in the office or on the cricket field

Datafication often brings ugly and perverse consequences. The easiest way to reduce poverty is to give people just enough money to inch them ahead of an arbitrarily defined definition of poverty, rather than tackle the deep-rooted and more complex causes. Schools are routinely decried for a narrow-minded approach to education - "teaching to the test" - but this is the inevitable result of the obsession with standarised tests. California has pioneered performance-related pay for teachers, but a huge rise in teacher-enabled cheating has been one unforeseen result.

No industry has been permeated by datafication quite like the financial sector. The complex - oh, so complex - algorithms that underpinned the financial system had a simple rationale. In place of impulsive human beings, decision-making would be transferred to formulas that dealt only in cold logic, ensuring an end to financial catastrophes. We know what happened next. Yet the crash has changed less than is commonly supposed: around seven billion shares change hands every day on US equity markets - and five billion are traded by algorithms.

The Ashes tour felt like English cricket's crash. The numbers said that it couldn't possibly happen; those who spotted the warning signs were belittled as naysayers letting emotions cloud their judgement. The Ashes series was caricatured as the triumph of the old school - Lehmann's penchant for discussing the day's play over a beer - over Flower's pseudo-scientific approach. While clearly a simplification - Lehmann is no philistine when it comes to data - the accusation contains a grain of truth.

Flower's attraction to big data originated from reading Moneyball, the book that examined how the scientific methods of Oakland Athletics manager Billy Beane helped the baseball team punch above its financial limitations. But it is too readily forgotten that the Oakland Athletics ran out of steam in knockout games. "My shit doesn't work in the playoffs," Beane exclaimed. "My job is to get us to the playoffs. What happens after that is luck." Not even Beane found an empirical way of measuring flair, spontaneity and big-game aptitude.

After the debris of England's tour Down Under, The Sun published its list of the 61 "guilty men" - including 29 non-players - involved in England's Ashes tour. It was hard not to ask what on earth the backroom staff was doing. And, more pertinently, if England's total touring party had numbered only 51 or 41, could England really have performed any worse? The proliferation of specialist coaches and analysts seemed antithetical to the self-expression of players on the pitch.

	The selection of Finn, Rankin and Tremlett for the Ashes was proof of the pitfalls of the reliance on bogus statistics © Getty Images  Enlarge

Similar questions are being asked in different fields. The average businessman now sends 108 emails a day. But, as inboxes get bigger, so opportunity for creativity decreases. This reality is slowly being recognised: a multi-million dollar industry has grown around filtering emails to liberate businessmen from the grind. The world is running into the limits of Silicon Valley's favoured mantra "In God we trust - all others bring data."

No one would advocate pretending that big data doesn't exist. Datafication is happening at a staggering rate - the amount of digital data doubles every three years. Flower's reign, for the most part, showed the virtues of using it smartly. But data is emphatically not a substitute for intuition and flair - either in the office or on the cricket field.

By the last embers of Flower's rule, England seemed not empowered by data but inhibited by it, as instinct, spontaneity and joy seeped from their cricket. Accusations of England lacking flair on the field had a point - witness Alastair Cook's insistence on having a cover sweeper regardless of the match situation. Going back to 2011, consider England's approach to tying down Sachin Tendulkar in the home series against India: they relied on drawing Tendulkar outside his off stump in the early part of his innings rather than let him get his runs on the on side, the result of a computer simulator plan, created by their team analyst Nathan "Numbers" Leamon.

The selection of three beanpole quick bowlers to tour Australia was rooted in data showing that such bowlers were most likely to thrive in Australia. The ECB looked at the characteristics of the best quick bowlers - delayed delivery, braced front leg and so on, and then tried to coach those virtues into their own players, seemingly not realising it was too late; you can't change those things once bowlers are more than about 15. But it did not matter how many boxes Steven Finn, Boyd Rankin and Chris Tremlett ticked in theory when they were utterly bereft of fitness and form in practice. It was proof of the pitfalls of excess devotion to data and reliance on bogus statistics. "Garbage in, garbage out," as some who work with data are prone to saying.

Data is a complement to intuition and judgement, not a replacement for them. As Cukier and Mayer-Schonberger argue in their study, big data "exacerbates a very old problem: relying on the numbers when they are far more fallible than we think".

Criticisms of Flower's reliance on data always lingered under the surface, as when South Africa expressed bafflement when Graham Onions was dropped for Ryan Sidebottom in 2010, a data-driven decision largely made before the tour even began. For all his triumphs as England coach, Flower ultimately got the balance between trusting people and numbers wrong. He was in good company. In the brave new world, those who thrive will not be those who use data most - but those who use it most smartly.

I was the other woman

Sarah Hardie never understood why some women got involved with married men, but then she met David …

• Sarah Hardie
• The Guardian, Saturday 1 March 2014

'It was a few months later, when David and I were in a relationship, that the guilt hit me.' Photograph: Getty Images (posed by model)

As I walked across the field towards David and my group of friends I was suddenly overcome by an immensely strong feeling. It was totally unexpected. It wasn't a blatant sexual sensation, such as that sometimes felt on glimpsing an attractive man. It was more of a velvety responsiveness that seeped through my body.

And that was how it all began. A gradual but mutual confession of what had unconsciously grown between us.

But there could never be a fairy tale love affair. For there was a huge obstacle – David was married.

I withdrew from that evening hoping that my feelings would fade. I intentionally kept away from the group of friends and from David, yet I couldn't stop thinking about him.

I had been single for a number of years but didn't yearn to be part of a couple. I loved my independence. I had a job, friends and a close family. I enjoyed running my home and relished the day-to-day care of my two boys.

I enjoyed the dating game and had grown accustomed to the strange ways of single and divorced fortysomething men. The necessity that many of these men had of only ever allowing a certain amount of closeness didn't bother me. I enjoyed their impressive attempts at wining and dining so obviously intended to ensure the evening ended in their bed.

But what I felt when I thought of David shocked me. I had never encountered anything like it before and knew from the way he had looked at me that he felt it too. I argued with myself that something so intense could never be wrong. I naively dreamed that people would understand when they saw us together and witnessed for themselves the strength of what we shared.

At this time I hadn't discussed anything in terms of the future with David. I was confident of his feelings but what if he didn't want to leave his wife? He had children. Together they had built their dream home. He had so much to lose – would he really gamble all that he had on me?

I had never understood why women got involved with married men but now I found myself wondering what I would do if an affair was the only thing on offer. Could I handle stolen moments followed by painfully watching him return to his family? Would I just be risking a slow emotional death, painfully starving on the morsels of his marriage?

As it happened, I didn't have to make a decision. A few weeks later, I received a phone call.

"I've left her," said David. "I've asked for a divorce."

I reeled from the impact of his words. As we talked it became apparent that neither of us doubted our relationship. We both knew that it would happen but we had to bide our time. We had to allow others to adapt. Emotionally, David had left his marriage years ago but now his family had to cope with his physical removal and the pain of the reality.

It was a few months later, when David and I were in a relationship, that the guilt hit me. It launched itself at me quite unexpectedly as the reality of everyone's pain registered. "Don't blame yourself," reassured David. "I didn't leave because of you – I left because my marriage was over. I would never have fallen in love with you if my marriage had been strong."

As divorce proceedings began and the painful arguments as they negotiated assets, finances and the children worsened, my guilt deepened. Neither of us believed in staying in an unhappy marriage for the children but their reproachful eyes staring at me as they realised that Daddy had a girlfriend began to haunt me.

I heard Yoko Ono say during an interview with BBC's Woman's Hour that when she and John Lennon first started their relationship they were totally shocked by the disapproval of others. I can relate to that. Telling my parents was hard but they were amazing in their response.

"You wouldn't be doing this if you weren't sure that it was right," trusted my father, and at that moment I loved him more than ever for understanding that none of what we had done was to intentionally cause pain.

Unfortunately, few other people were quite so accepting. I didn't meet David's parents for years. Their loyalties were understandably torn. Mutual friends ignored us and acquaintances stopped smiling. But what I really didn't expect and what I haven't ever come to terms with was the blame directed at me.

It felt as if people presumed that I had lured David away with a trap. I think they believed that if it wasn't for me he would have returned to his wife, blaming some sort of midlife crisis.

Sometimes, out walking, some of David's friends would stop and speak to him. Never once would their eyes acknowledge me at his side. All this caused stress within our relationship. There were times when I considered walking away. Maybe I had been wrong to become involved so soon. Maybe other people were right and without me, David might go back to his family and all the hurt that we had caused would slowly dissolve. But I knew that I couldn't end our relationship to please others. If I gave up now then everything so far would have been for nothing.

David had lost his home, his family and his friends. He was going through the most difficult time of his life. I, conversely, was going through the best time of my life, having finally met someone I truly wanted to be with.

I'd get angry that what I perceived as a very special time was marred by other people's disdain. And David would get angry that I wasn't being a little more understanding. He wanted to avoid people – I wanted to face them head on and show them that we were happy.

Looking back, I was selfish but I was convinced that the only reason people were not being nice to us was because they didn't understand how right we were for each other. David had a slightly more realistic outlook and knew that certain people would never accept our relationship. I have come to understand that now.

The people who are important to us have adapted with the passage of time. I have a good relationship with David's parents now and when the children visit we all get along really well. Having said that, there are still "friends" who don't speak to us and there are others who openly admit that they have been asked not to by David's ex-wife.

Without doubt, our relationship remains strong but that doesn't mean that it is problem free. Even all these years later, I still feel responsible. When I catch sight of his ex-wife or the children pass comment about "old times", the guilt remains overwhelming.

I have no regrets, though. I firmly believe that we did the right thing. We could have lied, buried our feelings. But I believe that I was entitled to take happiness when I found it. People naturally look out for themselves and that is what I did in the end. Where would I have been if I had looked the other way? My principles might have been intact but I would likely have been holding on to them alone. I would have watched my children flourish and waved them off as they spread their wings, always wondering what I had allowed to pass me by.

I look around me now and I see a happy family unit: David, myself and our four children.

Despite everything, I know that I did right to put me first for a change.

Names have been changed

An Indian Headshake - What it means?

Can 10,000 hours of practice make you an expert?

By Ben Carter BBC News

A much-touted theory suggests that practising any skill for 10,000 hours is sufficient to make you an expert. No innate talent? Not a problem. You just practice. But is it true?

One man who decided to test it is Dan McLaughlin, 34, a former commercial photographer from Portland, Oregon.

"The idea came in 2009. I was visiting my brother and we decided to play a par three, nine-hole course," he says. "I had never really been on a golf course and went out and shot a 57, which is horrible. It's 30 over par on an easy nine-hole course."

Far from being discouraged by his apparent lack of any natural talent for golf, Dan and his brother started talking about what it would take to become a professional golfer. Dan soon decided he wanted to try.

"When I announced I was going to quit my job, my co-workers started bringing books in and I read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, Geoff Colvin's Talent is Overrated and The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle," he says. "These books all had this idea of 10,000 hours in them."

The 10,000-hours concept can be traced back to a 1993 paper written by Anders Ericsson, a Professor at the University of Colorado, called The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.

It highlighted the work of a group of psychologists in Berlin, who had studied the practice habits of violin students in childhood, adolescence and adulthood.

All had begun playing at roughly five years of age with similar practice times. However, at age eight, practice times began to diverge. By age 20, the elite performers had averaged more than 10,000 hours of practice each, while the less able performers had only done 4,000 hours of practice.

The psychologists didn't see any naturally gifted performers emerge and this surprised them. If natural talent had played a role it wouldn't have been unreasonable to expect gifted performers to emerge after, say, 5,000 hours.

Anders Ericsson concluded that "many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years".

It is Malcolm Gladwell's hugely popular book, Outliers, that is largely responsible for introducing "the 10,000-hour rule" to a mass audience - it's the name of one of the chapters.

But Ericsson was not pleased. He wrote a rebuttal paper in 2012, called The Danger of Delegating Education to Journalists.

"The 10,000-hour rule was invented by Malcolm Gladwell who stated that, 'Researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours.' Gladwell cited our research on expert musicians as a stimulus for his provocative generalisation to a magical number," Ericsson writes.

Ericsson then pointed out that 10,000 was an average, and that many of the best musicians in his study had accumulated "substantially fewer" hours of practice. He underlined, also, that the quality of the practice was important.

"In contrast, Gladwell does not even mention the concept of deliberate practice," Ericsson writes.

Gladwell counters that Ericsson doesn't really think that talent exists.

"When he disagrees with the way I interpreted his work, it's because I disagree with him," he says.

"I think that being very, very good at something requires a big healthy dose of natural talent. And when I talk about the Beatles - they had masses of natural talent. They were born geniuses. Ericsson wouldn't say that.

"Ericsson, if you read some of his writings, is... saying the right kind of practice is sufficient."

Gladwell places himself roughly in the middle of a sliding scale with Ericsson at one end, placing little emphasis on the role of natural talent, and at the other end a writer such as David Epstein, author of the The Sports Gene. Epstein is "a bit more of a talent person than me" Gladwell suggests.

One of the difficulties with assessing whether expert-level performance can be obtained just through practice is that most studies are done after the subjects have reached that level.

It would be better to follow the progress of someone with no innate talent in a particular discipline who chooses to complete 10,000 hours of deliberate practice in it.

And we can, thanks to our wannabe professional golfer, Dan McLaughlin.

"I began the plan in April 2010 and I basically putted from one foot and slowly worked away from the hole," he says.

"Eighteen months into it I hit my first driver and now it's approaching four years and I'm about half way. So I'm 5,000 hours into the project. My current handicap is right at a 4.1 and the goal is to get down to a plus handicap [below zero] where I have the skill set to compete in a legitimate PGA tour event."

David Epstein hopes that McLaughlin can reach his goal, but he has some doubts. In the sporting world innate ability is mandatory, he believes.

A recent study of baseball players, Epstein points out, found that the average player had 20/13 vision as opposed to normal 20/20 vision. What this means is that they can see at 20 feet what a normal person would need to be at 13 feet to see clearly. That gives a hitter an enormous advantage when it comes to striking a ball being thrown towards them at 95mph from 60 feet (or 153km/h from 18m).

Using an analogy from computing, Epstein says the hardware is someone's visual acuity - or the physiology of their eye that they cannot change - while the software is the set of skills they learn by many, many hours of practice.

"No matter how good their vision is, it's like a laptop with only the hardware - with no programmes on it, it's useless. But once they've downloaded that software, once they have learned those sports-specific skills, the better the hardware is the better the total machine is going to be."

But is there a simpler way to think about all this? Maybe talented people just practise more and try harder at the thing they're already good at - because they enjoy it?

"Imagine being in calculus class on your first day and the teacher being at the board writing an equation, and you look at it and think 'Wow, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen,' which some people do," says Gladwell.

"For those people to go home and do two hours of calculus homework is thrilling, whereas for the rest of us it's beyond a chore and more like a nightmare.

"Those that have done the two hours' practice come in the following day and everything is easier than it is for those who didn't enjoy it in the first place and didn't do the two hours' homework."

What Dan McLaughlin is hoping is that what he lacks in innate talent he more than makes up for with his 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.

If Dan's plan goes well he could be mixing it with the likes of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy in 2018. If not, he will just be a very good golfer.

Warner's honesty deserves respect

Illustration: Jim Pavlidis

Greg Baum in The Age

Upon being given out lbw one day, W.G.Grace fixed the umpire with a stare and barked: ''Play on. They came to see me bat, not you umpire.'' That night, ICC match referee the Earl of Sheffield convened a hearing, where it was deemed that Grace had breached article 2.1.7 of the code of conduct, concerning ''public criticism or inappropriate comment'' about a player or official. He was fined half his match fee, which became a problem because he had already spent it on port for himself and kibble for his beagles.

''It was disrespectful for WG to publicly denigrate an official,'' said Lord Sheffield. ''I'm sure he will be careful when making public comments in the future.''

Fifty years later, at the Adelaide nadir of Bodyline, battered and bruised Australian captain Bill Woodfull refused to accept the sympathy of England manager Pellham Warner, saying curtly: ''I don't want to see you, Mr Warner. There are two teams out there. One is playing cricket. The other is making no attempt to do so.''

This was leaked to the media, prompting ICC match referee Sir Henry Leveson Gower to summons Woodfull, fine him and impose a two-match suspended sentence. Woodfull accepted his punishment stoically, but wondered as he sipped his bedtime cup of tea that night which of Don Bradman and Jack Fingleton was responsible for the leak.

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''It was disrespectful of Mr Woodfull to publicly denigrate an opponent and imply that the opponent was engaging in sharp practice,'' intoned Sir Henry. ''I'm sure Mr Woodfull will be careful when making public comments in the future.''

Some people never learn. This week, David Warner hinted in a radio interview that South Africa might have done more than simply take the rough with the smooth to achieve deadly reverse swing to win the second Test. ''We were actually questioning whether or not A.B.de Villiers would … with his glove, wipe the rough side every ball,'' he said.

Cue ICC match referee Roshan Mahanama, cue a fine of a quarter of Warner's match fee, cue reprimand: ''It was disrespectful for David to publicly denigrate an opponent, and imply that a South African player was engaging in sharp practice. I'm sure David will be careful when making public comment in the future.''

If anything is disrespectful in cricket, it is the reconfiguring of the concept of respect, turning it into some sort of state room carpet under which all tensions and spiritedness and debate must be augustly swept so as not to offend cricket's graven self-image of a game on a higher moral plane.

Even as England and Australia beat each other up in turn in the Ashes, they ''respected'' one another. After the Stuart Broad non-walking drama at Trent Bridge, Kevin Pietersen said: ''Aleem Dar is a fantastic umpire, and we respect his decisions.'' KP: home-wrecker in the change room, but ever ''respectful'' in public. Michael Clarke threatened Jimmy Anderson with physical harm in the gloaming in Brisbane, then said later: ''All of the England players know that we respect them.''

At the same press conference, Warner raised eyebrows when he talked of the Johnson-ed English batsmen and their ''scared eyes''. However much retrospective offence was taken, the sentiment beneath the momentary silence in the room then was that here was a rare cricketer, prepared to engage with the issue of the moment, not gloss over it in the name of respect, vainly taken.

It was not diplomatic, because it is not in Warner to be diplomatic. In this, the cricketer he most resembles is old WG, as described by Geoffrey Moorhouse in Wisden 1988: ''A hand of whist appears to have marked the limit of his capacity for cerebration, and if one wished to be rude to suburbia one might identify Grace as suburban man incarnate.''

Not every cricketer can be Rahul Dravid. Not ever cricketing utterance can be a Mike Brearley-style dissertation, nor should be a Clarke-esque circumlocution. Warner, unable to dissemble, most often tells his see-ball-hit-ball truth, and pastiche notions of ''respect'' be damned. The least that can be said of his approach is that it is crazy-brave: it is he who stands in the 22-yard front line, facing an attack doubly rearmed by a new ball and fresh slight.

As long as Warner's gibes are not personal, nor demean innocents, what harm is in them, except to a spurious ideal of respect? Impugning professionalism is as old as professionalism. Separately, it is mystifying that work to coax a ball to reverse swing is regarded as a sin. Ryan Harris, in distancing himself from Warner's stance, inadvertently bore him out. ''You've got to do something with the ball, everyone does it,'' he said. ''They handled the ball better than us.''

Ahead of Cape Town and its 47-all-out ghosts, South African coach Russell Domingo said: ''I'm sure [Australia] will look at the highlights … to see what happened here last time, and there will be a little bit of anxiety, I suppose.'' Like de Villiers' glove, it was meant to rub Australia up the wrong way. Disrespectfully. Fortunately, the ICC match referee was on a day off.