Saturday 5 December 2015
Paralysed Opec pleads for allies as oil price crumbles
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Telegraph
The Opec cartel is to continue flooding the world with crude oil despite a chronic glut and the desperate plight of its own members, demanding that Russia, Kazakhstan and other producers join forces before there can be output cuts.
Brent prices tumbled almost $2 a barrel to $42.90 as traders tried to make sense of the fractious Opec gathering in Vienna, which ended with no production target and no guidance on policy. It reeked of paralysis.
Prices are poised to test lows last seen at the depths of the financial crisis in early 2009. The shares of oil companies plummeted in London, and US shale drillers went into freefall on Wall Street.
Oil tankers are lined up off the cost of Texas, a flotilla of crude storage across the world Photo: Alamy
“Lots of people said Opec was dead. Opec itself has just confirmed it,” said Jamie Webster, head of HIS Energy.
Venezuela’s oil minister, Eulogio del Pino, pushed for a cut in output of 1.5m barrels a day (b/d) to clear the market, describing the failure to act as calamitous. “We are really worried,” he said.
Abdallah Salem el-Badri, Opec’s chief, conceded that the cartel’s strategy has been reduced to an impotent waiting game, hoping that the pain of low prices will lure Russia and other global producers to the table. “We are looking for negotiations with non-Opec, and trying to reach a collective effort,” he said.
Mr el-Badri said there have been “positive” noises from some but none is yet ready to lock arms and create a sort of super-Opec, able to dictate prices. “Everybody is trying to digest how they can do it,” he said
The cartel’s 12 members postponed a decision on their next step until next year, once they know how much oil Iran will sell after sanctions are lifted. “The picture is not really clear at this time, and we are going to look one more time in June,” he said.
“Everybody is worried about prices. Nobody is happy,” said Iraq’s envoy, Adel Abdul Mahdi. His country has lost 42pc of its fiscal revenues and is effectively bankrupt.
Foreign companies are owed billions and have begun to freeze projects. The government cannot afford to pay its own security forces and is cutting vital funding for anti-ISIS militias, raising fears that the political crisis could spin out of control.
Helima Croft, from RBC Capital Markets, said four of the frontline states in the fight against ISIS are now being destabilized by the crash in oil prices, including Algeria and Libya.
Opec leaders will now have to grit their teeth and prepare for a long siege, testing their social welfare models to the point of destruction. Even Saudi Arabia is pushing through drastic austerity measures.
Deutsche Bank said the fiscal break-even cost needed to balance the budget is roughly $120 for Bahrain, $100 for Saudi Arabia, $90 for Nigeria and Venezuela, and $80 for Russia, based on current exchange rate effects.
“It is going to be 12 to 18 months before they see any relief,” David Fyfe, from the oil trading group Gunvor, said.
“We think oil stocks will continue to build in the first half of next year and we don’t think they will draw down to normal levels until well into 2017.”
Mr Fyfe said Iran has 40m to 50m barrels floating on tankers offshore that will flood onto the market as soon as sanctions are lifted. It will then crank up extra output to 500,000 b/d by the end of next year.
Per Magnus Nysveen, from Rystad Energy, said it will take a very long time to force the capitulation of America’s shale industry. While the rig count in the US has collapsed by 60pc over the past year, the number of wells being “fracked” has risen in recent weeks.
“There is still an inventory of 3,500 wells. Theoretically they could continue fracking at this pace for another six months without any new drilling. We don’t think there is going to be a significant fall in US output next year. It could be flat,” he said.
Mr Nysveen said the damage will be in other parts of the world, chiefly the mature offshore fields in the Gulf of Mexico, North Sea, Brazil and Africa. The decline rate of old fields will double to 10pc a year, subtracting 750,000 b/d from world supply within 12 months.
It is going to be a long war of attrition. The world is awash with oil. US crude inventories rose further last week by 1.6m barrels to the vertiginous level of 489.4m.
China has been soaking up some 250,000 b/d for its strategic reserves, preventing a collapse of the market. But the old sites are filling up and it is unclear whether new facilities are ready.
OPEC is now just as irrelevant as the once mighty Texas Railroad Commission
More than 100m barrels are being stored on tankers offshore. Tanker day-rates have soared to more than $111,000 – the highest since July 2008 – as the last remaining vessels are booked to absorb the glut.
Goldman Sachs warns that the market is approaching an “inflexion point” that could send prices crashing to a new a floor of $20, the "cash cost" that forces drillers to stop production altogether.
A dangerous situation is developing. Opec policy has caused spare capacity to fall to a wafer-thin margin of 2m b/d, leaving no one to act as the regulator of the market.
This sets the stage for a violent spike in prices down the road. The International Energy Agency says the world needs $650bn of fresh investment each year in upstream oil and gas just to stand still, yet $240bn has already been slashed from projects earmarked for next year.
Bhushan Bahree, from HIS Energy, says there is no longer anything to distinguish Opec members from any other producer. The cartel is defunct. “Opec and non-Opec are irrelevant classifications,” he said.
There is a new world order of three oil superpowers with roughly equal shares – Saudi Arabia, Russia and the US – and none of them is yet willing to cut output voluntarily to shore up prices.
The Americans would never agree to such a move. The Russians cannot easily do so, given that their key producers are listed-companies, supposedly answerable to shareholders, and Siberian conditions make it hard to switch output on and off. The Saudis are stuck.
Mr Bahree compares the demise of Opec with the fall of the Texas Railroad Commission, the once mighty giant that set output and controlled world prices through the middle years of the 20th century. The Commission still exists, a forgotten shadow of its former self. Today it issues local permits.
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.
Dons still pull the strings in Bollywood
- JOSY JOSEPH, SHARAD VYAS, GAUTAM S MENGLE in The hindu
Two decades after the cold-blooded murder of “Cassette King” Gulshan Kumar, the underworld still enjoys considerable access to the Mumbai film industry. Beneath the glitz, the fabric of the underworld-Bollywood nexus has not changed much even in 2015 — actors, producers and distributors not only pay obeisance to the ‘bhais’ at offshore locations such as Dubai but also help them establish a toehold in the film business by collaborating with production houses directly funded by fugitive gangster Chhota Shakeel, show investigations by The Hindu.
Indian agencies listened in on several conversations between Chhota Shakeel, a leading organiser of Bollywood events in the UAE, and other underworld operatives that showed that arrangements were under way in full swing to welcome a Bollywood superstar at the popular Meydan Hotel in Nad Al Sheba in Dubai from May 27 to 30. The fugitive don booked a double-room in the hotel for Dawood Ibrahim’s son Moin and daughter-in-law who were keen on a photo-op with the star. One intercept reveals an aide telling Shakeel in Dubai that he and others were with one Karim Bhai and the film star had gone out. The aide assures Shakeel that he will take Dawood’s son and daughter-in-law to the star. After a few minutes, Shakeel calls the aide to ask him to give his reference to the Bollywood event organiser, and that “children” must be arranged a good photo-op.
The meeting concluded on the same day as planned by Shakeel.
Dawood’s family was introduced to the actor as “Haji Saheb’s” children. It could well be the code name for Dawood among those in the film fraternity who continues to deal with him, or a way to mislead the superstar into meeting Dawood’s family members. Sources in the security establishment said the Shakeel contact in Dubai, who arranged the meeting for Dawood’s son with the star, was closely involved in Bollywood film promotions in Dubai and was a close acquaintance of top actors and production houses in Mumbai. Close proximity of actors, or cricketers, with the criminal world during their UAE tours has been a matter of concern for intelligence agencies. The Hindu’s investigation completes an important missing link of this puzzle since the 1993 blasts: a clear synergy between Bollywood and the underworld during tours abroad continues to date.
In March, a popular Pakistani television actor, desperately in need of a visa to visit India and find work in Mumbai, approached Shakeel for arranging a meeting with top television channels. The don immediately set up meetings for the newbie with several popular production houses.
In another intercept, the same actor called up Shakeel to push for his launch in Bollywood with a leading production house. Subsequently, Shakeel called up the CEO of a movie production house that is a major player in the Indian TV world and arranged a meeting. The intercepts do not reveal if the meeting ever took place, but prove the phone call was made.
Several intercepts show Shakeel attempting to reach out on February 26 to a Bollywood director who had just finished a film on Dawood Ibrahim’s life. In 2013, the fugitive don had planned a hit on the same director. When an associate in Mumbai asked Shakeel if he found time to threaten another superstar of Bollywood, Shakeel replied that he no longer called up actors with extortion calls.
Cricket is losing the popularity contest
George Dobell in Cricinfo
The absence of any cricketers from the BBC's annual awards bash is another stark warning of the invisibility of the sport in the British mainstream
Stuart Broad and Joe Root played key roles in the Ashes win, but neither man made the BBC Sports Personality shortlist © Getty Images
There are some things - good teeth, a parachute, a car that starts in wet weather - that you appreciate more in their absence.
So it was when the contenders were announced for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year award. In a year when England have won the Ashes, when Joe Root has been rated - albeit briefly - the best Test batsman in the world and when Stuart Broad has bowled out Australia in a session, there was no room for a cricketer in the 12-strong list.
That is not to denigrate the merits of each contender or accept the somewhat self-congratulatory worth of the award. But there was a time when Ashes success warranted open-top bus rides through Trafalgar Square and MBEs all round. There was a time when cricket seemed to matter more.
But that was when cricket was broadcast on free-to-air television. And, whatever the many merits of Sky's coverage of England cricket over the last decade or so, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the game, starved of the oxygen of publicity in the UK, is diminishing in relevance by the year.
The broadcast deal is not cricket's only issue. Many school playing fields are long gone and cricket, with its demand for time and facilities, cannot reasonably be expected to fit into many teachers' timetables. The world has changed and a game that lasts either a full afternoon or five days may have lost its appeal to a quicker, more impatient world.
When Warwickshire first won the County Championship, a huge crowd greeted their return to New Street Station; if they win it next year, the local paper will pick up a short report paid for by the ECB and find a column inside the paper for it. The warning signs are everywhere.
Which is why T20 cricket - and televised free-to-air T20 cricket - is so vital. It is the vehicle by which the game can reconnect and inspire another generation of players and supporters. The hugely encouraging spectator numbers in 2015, spectator numbers that owe a great deal to the marketing nous of some counties, shows there is hope and potential. It remains a great game. We just need to expose more people to it.
It seems the penny has dropped. While nothing is yet resolved, it does seem that some key figures at the ECB have accepted the counties' argument that free-to-air coverage - either on television or on-line - has a part to play in the next television deal.
They had hoped that a new, city-based T20 league would enable them to squeeze enough money out of the next broadcast deal to make the problem go away for a while. But the counties saw, to their credit, that this would have been a short-term solution. They saw that all the redeveloped stadiums in the land and a bank account boasting reserves of £80m or more (as the ECB have) was no use if those stadiums were rarely full.
They saw, unlike the previous regime at the ECB, that money does not make everything alright. That not everything of value can be packaged and sold. That they exist to nurture and develop the sport and the money they make is a valuable tool to that end, not the end in itself.
Cricket Australia have already journeyed that way. They took a hit on the Big Bash broadcasting deal, realising that it was more important for the sport to reach a mass audience on free-to-air TV rather than earn short-term riches on a subscription panel. They have pointed the way for the ECB.
It currently seems likely (it could change) that, between 2017 and 2019 at least, the English domestic T20 tournament will be played in two divisions with broadcasters focussing almost exclusively on the top division. Many of the counties hope that format will remain long after the new broadcast deals begin in 2020; some at Lord's hope it will be a Trojan horse for an eight- or nine-team event. If that latter argument wins in an era of subscription-only coverage, the game will become invisible across vast tracts of the country. It will retract yet further.
That would be a missed opportunity. For there is, right now, much to like about English cricket. While football - with its spoilt-brat millionaire heroes - has lost touch with the man in the street, cricketers have re-engaged. They play with a smile, they stop for autographs and photos. They remind us that it is perfectly possible to be hugely talented, successful and likeable.
The national team play exciting, joyful cricket. They have, in Jos Buttler, a man who can produce the sort of innings we used to see only when the finest Caribbean cricketers played the county game. They have, in Ben Stokes, an allrounder to make football-loving kids want to pick up a bat and ball; a man in Joe Root who might be the finest batsman in the world; a leader in Charlotte Edwards who has remained at the top of her sport throughout her career and done a great deal to further her sport. And, at a time when a few shrill voices would have us believe that communities of different faiths and cultures cannot coexist, a man in Moeen Aliwho gently shows us otherwise. There is much to celebrate in cricket.
But who will know unless they have a cricket-loving parent, they attend a private school or they come from an Asian community where the game remains relevant? How will the sport reach a new audience? How, in the long-term, will the value of the broadcast deals be maintained if the market diminishes? Cricket in England has become a niche and the absence of a cricketer in the Sports Personality of the Year list is another sign.
The money earned over the last few years has enabled the ECB to do many admirable things. They have led the way in the funding of disability cricket, the development of women's cricket and the improvement of facilities from the grassroots to the international game. All of this would have been desperately difficult without Sky's investment.
Nor is the past is not quite as marvellous as is remembered. Channel 4's coverage of two Ashes series - now talked about as if it were a golden age - was interrupted, in all, by 33 hours' worth of horse racing. Channel 4 also persuaded the ECB to start Tests at 10.30am one summer in order not to disrupt the evening scheduling of The Simpsons and Hollyoaks.
Equally, the BBC coverage of "Botham's Ashes" of 1981 was interrupted by programmes such as Playschool, Chock-a-block and The Skill of Lip-Reading while, for several years, their Sunday League coverage consisted of a single camera. Still, for many of us, it was our gateway drug to this great game. And yes, it seems to fair to reflect whether the BBC, for all the excellence of its radio coverage, for all its good intentions and the fine things it stands for, is currently keeping its side of the bargain when it comes to broadcasting sport.
Since 2006, Sky, with their multiple cameras, has taken cricket coverage to a new level. By broadcasting all England games home and away - something of which we could not dream 25 years ago - guaranteeing weeks of county coverage each season, and their willingness (a willingness we often take for granted in the UK but which is rare elsewhere) to ask the hard questions in interviews and commentary, they probably offer the best service cricket lovers have ever had.
Or at least those who can afford it. And there is the rub, because whatever the virtue of the Sky deal for the ECB's finances and whatever the virtues of their coverage, the fact is that vast sections of the country have no access to live cricket on television. In a nation where an uncomfortable number have the need of foodbanks, it is grotesque to think most could afford subscription TV if they only cared enough.
And whatever the benefits of sending coaches into primary schools - and Sky's money has helped fund Chance to Shine - it is hard to believe that 1,000 hours of helping kids hit tennis balls off cones will ever replace one hour of inspiration provided by watching the likes of Ian Botham, Andrew Flintoff or Ben Stokes lead England to the Ashes. Nothing can replace the oxygen of publicity. The benefits of the Sky money have long since been counteracted by the negatives in the reduced audience.
The water has been rising round our feet for some time. We have seen reports of falling participation numbers, we have seen England teams disproportionately reliant upon cricketers who learned the game either abroad or in public schools, and we have seen newspapers that used to take pride in their county cricket coverage abandon it almost completely. We have seen poorly attended international games - only the Ashes seems to be immune from the decline - The absence of a cricketer from the Sport's Personality of the Year list - whatever the imperfections of that contest - is the latest symbol of the decline. We're fools to ignore it.
This is not meant to sound pessimistic. Were there a fire in the building, one could remain optimistic of escape while still sounding the alarm. We have a great game to offer. But, as Bob Dylan put it, let us not talk falsely now, for the hour is getting late.
The absence of any cricketers from the BBC's annual awards bash is another stark warning of the invisibility of the sport in the British mainstream
Stuart Broad and Joe Root played key roles in the Ashes win, but neither man made the BBC Sports Personality shortlist © Getty ImagesThere are some things - good teeth, a parachute, a car that starts in wet weather - that you appreciate more in their absence.
So it was when the contenders were announced for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year award. In a year when England have won the Ashes, when Joe Root has been rated - albeit briefly - the best Test batsman in the world and when Stuart Broad has bowled out Australia in a session, there was no room for a cricketer in the 12-strong list.
That is not to denigrate the merits of each contender or accept the somewhat self-congratulatory worth of the award. But there was a time when Ashes success warranted open-top bus rides through Trafalgar Square and MBEs all round. There was a time when cricket seemed to matter more.
But that was when cricket was broadcast on free-to-air television. And, whatever the many merits of Sky's coverage of England cricket over the last decade or so, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the game, starved of the oxygen of publicity in the UK, is diminishing in relevance by the year.
The broadcast deal is not cricket's only issue. Many school playing fields are long gone and cricket, with its demand for time and facilities, cannot reasonably be expected to fit into many teachers' timetables. The world has changed and a game that lasts either a full afternoon or five days may have lost its appeal to a quicker, more impatient world.
When Warwickshire first won the County Championship, a huge crowd greeted their return to New Street Station; if they win it next year, the local paper will pick up a short report paid for by the ECB and find a column inside the paper for it. The warning signs are everywhere.
Which is why T20 cricket - and televised free-to-air T20 cricket - is so vital. It is the vehicle by which the game can reconnect and inspire another generation of players and supporters. The hugely encouraging spectator numbers in 2015, spectator numbers that owe a great deal to the marketing nous of some counties, shows there is hope and potential. It remains a great game. We just need to expose more people to it.
It seems the penny has dropped. While nothing is yet resolved, it does seem that some key figures at the ECB have accepted the counties' argument that free-to-air coverage - either on television or on-line - has a part to play in the next television deal.
They had hoped that a new, city-based T20 league would enable them to squeeze enough money out of the next broadcast deal to make the problem go away for a while. But the counties saw, to their credit, that this would have been a short-term solution. They saw that all the redeveloped stadiums in the land and a bank account boasting reserves of £80m or more (as the ECB have) was no use if those stadiums were rarely full.
They saw, unlike the previous regime at the ECB, that money does not make everything alright. That not everything of value can be packaged and sold. That they exist to nurture and develop the sport and the money they make is a valuable tool to that end, not the end in itself.
Cricket Australia have already journeyed that way. They took a hit on the Big Bash broadcasting deal, realising that it was more important for the sport to reach a mass audience on free-to-air TV rather than earn short-term riches on a subscription panel. They have pointed the way for the ECB.
It currently seems likely (it could change) that, between 2017 and 2019 at least, the English domestic T20 tournament will be played in two divisions with broadcasters focussing almost exclusively on the top division. Many of the counties hope that format will remain long after the new broadcast deals begin in 2020; some at Lord's hope it will be a Trojan horse for an eight- or nine-team event. If that latter argument wins in an era of subscription-only coverage, the game will become invisible across vast tracts of the country. It will retract yet further.
That would be a missed opportunity. For there is, right now, much to like about English cricket. While football - with its spoilt-brat millionaire heroes - has lost touch with the man in the street, cricketers have re-engaged. They play with a smile, they stop for autographs and photos. They remind us that it is perfectly possible to be hugely talented, successful and likeable.
The national team play exciting, joyful cricket. They have, in Jos Buttler, a man who can produce the sort of innings we used to see only when the finest Caribbean cricketers played the county game. They have, in Ben Stokes, an allrounder to make football-loving kids want to pick up a bat and ball; a man in Joe Root who might be the finest batsman in the world; a leader in Charlotte Edwards who has remained at the top of her sport throughout her career and done a great deal to further her sport. And, at a time when a few shrill voices would have us believe that communities of different faiths and cultures cannot coexist, a man in Moeen Aliwho gently shows us otherwise. There is much to celebrate in cricket.
But who will know unless they have a cricket-loving parent, they attend a private school or they come from an Asian community where the game remains relevant? How will the sport reach a new audience? How, in the long-term, will the value of the broadcast deals be maintained if the market diminishes? Cricket in England has become a niche and the absence of a cricketer in the Sports Personality of the Year list is another sign.
The money earned over the last few years has enabled the ECB to do many admirable things. They have led the way in the funding of disability cricket, the development of women's cricket and the improvement of facilities from the grassroots to the international game. All of this would have been desperately difficult without Sky's investment.
Nor is the past is not quite as marvellous as is remembered. Channel 4's coverage of two Ashes series - now talked about as if it were a golden age - was interrupted, in all, by 33 hours' worth of horse racing. Channel 4 also persuaded the ECB to start Tests at 10.30am one summer in order not to disrupt the evening scheduling of The Simpsons and Hollyoaks.
Equally, the BBC coverage of "Botham's Ashes" of 1981 was interrupted by programmes such as Playschool, Chock-a-block and The Skill of Lip-Reading while, for several years, their Sunday League coverage consisted of a single camera. Still, for many of us, it was our gateway drug to this great game. And yes, it seems to fair to reflect whether the BBC, for all the excellence of its radio coverage, for all its good intentions and the fine things it stands for, is currently keeping its side of the bargain when it comes to broadcasting sport.
Since 2006, Sky, with their multiple cameras, has taken cricket coverage to a new level. By broadcasting all England games home and away - something of which we could not dream 25 years ago - guaranteeing weeks of county coverage each season, and their willingness (a willingness we often take for granted in the UK but which is rare elsewhere) to ask the hard questions in interviews and commentary, they probably offer the best service cricket lovers have ever had.
Or at least those who can afford it. And there is the rub, because whatever the virtue of the Sky deal for the ECB's finances and whatever the virtues of their coverage, the fact is that vast sections of the country have no access to live cricket on television. In a nation where an uncomfortable number have the need of foodbanks, it is grotesque to think most could afford subscription TV if they only cared enough.
And whatever the benefits of sending coaches into primary schools - and Sky's money has helped fund Chance to Shine - it is hard to believe that 1,000 hours of helping kids hit tennis balls off cones will ever replace one hour of inspiration provided by watching the likes of Ian Botham, Andrew Flintoff or Ben Stokes lead England to the Ashes. Nothing can replace the oxygen of publicity. The benefits of the Sky money have long since been counteracted by the negatives in the reduced audience.
The water has been rising round our feet for some time. We have seen reports of falling participation numbers, we have seen England teams disproportionately reliant upon cricketers who learned the game either abroad or in public schools, and we have seen newspapers that used to take pride in their county cricket coverage abandon it almost completely. We have seen poorly attended international games - only the Ashes seems to be immune from the decline - The absence of a cricketer from the Sport's Personality of the Year list - whatever the imperfections of that contest - is the latest symbol of the decline. We're fools to ignore it.
This is not meant to sound pessimistic. Were there a fire in the building, one could remain optimistic of escape while still sounding the alarm. We have a great game to offer. But, as Bob Dylan put it, let us not talk falsely now, for the hour is getting late.
Tuesday 1 December 2015
Why blame culture is toxic for sport
Ed Smith in Cricinfo
Is ranting at players during team talks like bloodletting in the age of quack doctors?
Shouting at players: Satisfying? Yes. Effective? No © AFP
The subversive in me would love to whitewash over the usual clichés and catchphrases that are splashed on dressing-room walls and replace them with a more cynical message:
The six phases of a project:
1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the guilty
5. Punishment of the innocent
6. Rewards for the uninvolved
Not very cheering, I admit, but a salutary warning about our obsession with blame - a preoccupation sustained by dodgy narratives about "causes" that leads not to institutional improvement but to self-serving politics. Having pinned the blame on someone - rightly or, more likely, wrongly - the next task is "moving on". Sound familiar?
The "six phases" were attached to an office wall by an employee at the Republic Bank of New York. The story appears in Black Box Thinking, Matthew Syed's new book. Syed (a leading sports columnist and double Olympian) argues that our preoccupation with convenient blame - rather than openness to learning from failure - is a central factor holding teams and individuals back from improving. I think he is right.
Syed expresses admiration for the airline industry and its commitment to learning from failure - especially from "black boxes", the explosion-proof devices that record the conversations of pilots and other data. If the plane's wreckage is found, lessons - no matter how painful - must be learned. In the jargon, learning inside the aviation industry is an "open loop". (An "open loop" leads to progress because the feedback is rationally acted on; a "closed loop" is where failure doesn't lead to progress because weaknesses are ignored or errors are misinterpreted.) Syed presents harrowing examples from hospital operating theatres, of "closed loops" costing lives. Indeed, with its recurrent plane crashes and botched operations, the book takes the search for transferrable lessons to harrowing extremes.
One question prompted by Black Box Thinking is why is sport is not instinctively enthusiastic about evidence-based discussion. You might think that sports teams would be so keen to improve that they would rush to expose their ideas to rational and reflective scrutiny. But that's not always the case. As a player I often felt that insecure teams shrank from critical thinking, where more confident teams encouraged it.
The first problem sport has with critical thinking is the "narrative fallacy" (a concept popularised by Nassim Taleb). Consider this statement, thrown at me by a coach as I left the dressing room and walked onto the field after winning the toss and deciding to bowl first: "We need to have them five wickets down at lunch to justify the decision."
Hmm. First, even thinking about "justifying" a decision is an unnecessary distraction. Secondly, it's also irrational to think that the fact of taking five wickets, even if it happens, proves the decision was right. I might have misread the wicket, which actually suited batting first, but the opposition might have suffered a bad morning - five wickets could fall and yet the decision could still easily be wrong.
Alternatively, the wicket might suit bowling - and hence "justify" my decision - but we might bowl improbably badly and drop our catches. In other words, it could be the right decision even if they are no wickets down at lunch. What happened after the decision (especially when the sample of evidence is small or, as in this instance, solitary) does not automatically prove the rightness or wrongness of the decision.
Fancy theorising? Prefer practical realities? This kind of theorising, in fact, is bound up with very practical realities. Consider this example.
For much of medical history, bloodletting was a common and highly respected procedure. When a patient was suffering from a serious ailment and went to a leading doctor, the medical guru promptly drained significant amounts of blood from an already weak body. Madness? It happened for centuries.
And sometimes, if we don't think critically, it "works". As Syed points out, in a group of ten patients treated with bloodletting, five might die and five get better. So it worked for the five who survived, right?
Only, it didn't, of course. The five who were healed would have got better anyway (the body has great powers of self-recuperation). And some among the five who died were pushed from survival into death. Proving this fact, however, was more difficult - especially in a medical culture dominated by doctors who advocated and profited materially from bloodletting.
The challenge of demonstrating the real usefulness (or otherwise) of a procedure led to the concept of the "control group". Now imagine a group of 20 patients with serious illnesses - and split them into two groups, ten in each group. One group of ten patients gets a course of bloodletting, the other group of ten (the control group) does not. If we discover that five out of ten died in the bloodletting group and only three out of ten among the non-bloodletting group, then, at last, we have the beginnings of a proper evidence-based approach. The intervention (bloodletting) did more harm than simply doing nothing. It was iatrogenic.
Iatrogenic interventions are common in sport, too - such as when the coach tells a batsman to change his lifelong grip before making his Test debut. (Impossible? Exactly that happened to a friend of mine.) The angry team meeting is a classic iatrogenic intervention. Shouting at the team and vindictively blaming individual players, like bloodletting, provides the coach with the satisfying illusion that it works well sometimes. By "it works", we imply that the team in question played better after half-time or the following morning. Even having suffered an iatrogenic intervention, however, some teams - like some patients enduring bloodletting - inevitably play better afterwards. But on average, all taken together, teams would have playedbetter still without the distraction of a raging coach. (This insight helped win Daniel Kahneman a Nobel Prize, as I learned when I interviewed him.)
The great difficulty of sport, of course, is the challenge of conducting a proper control group experiment - because the game situation, pressures and circumstances are seldom exactly the same twice over. However, merely being open to the logic of these ideas, constantly exposing judgements and intuitions to critical thinking, takes decision-makers a good step in the direction of avoiding huge errors of conventional thinking.
That is why much of what Syed calls "black box thinking" could, I think, be filed under "critical thinking" - the desire to refine and improve one's system of thought as you are exposed to new experiences and ideas. Here is a personal rule of thumb: critical thinkers are also the best company over the long term. Critical thinkers are not only better bets professionally, they are also more interesting friends. Who wants to listen to the same set of unexamined views and sacrosanct opinions for decades? If you believe that your ideas don't ever need to evolve and adapt, can we at least skip dinner?
It is hard to imagine how anyone who is interested in leadership, innovation or self-improvement could fail to find something new and challenging in this book. Rather than presenting a simplistic catch-all solution, Syed takes us on a modern and personal walk through the scientific method. The book makes an interesting contrast with Syed's first book,Bounce, which proposed that talent is a myth - an argument that can be summed up in a single, seductive phrase: genius is a question of practice.
Rather than presenting a single idea, Black Box Thinking circles around a main theme - illustrating and illuminating it by drawing on a dizzyingly wide and eclectic series of ideas, case studies and lines of philosophical enquiry. The reader finishes the book with a deeper understanding of how he might improve and grow over the long term, rather than the transient feeling of having all his problems solved. The author, we sense, has experienced a similar journey while writing the book. Syed doesn't just preach black-box thinking, he practises it.
Is ranting at players during team talks like bloodletting in the age of quack doctors?
Shouting at players: Satisfying? Yes. Effective? No © AFPThe subversive in me would love to whitewash over the usual clichés and catchphrases that are splashed on dressing-room walls and replace them with a more cynical message:
The six phases of a project:
1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the guilty
5. Punishment of the innocent
6. Rewards for the uninvolved
Not very cheering, I admit, but a salutary warning about our obsession with blame - a preoccupation sustained by dodgy narratives about "causes" that leads not to institutional improvement but to self-serving politics. Having pinned the blame on someone - rightly or, more likely, wrongly - the next task is "moving on". Sound familiar?
The "six phases" were attached to an office wall by an employee at the Republic Bank of New York. The story appears in Black Box Thinking, Matthew Syed's new book. Syed (a leading sports columnist and double Olympian) argues that our preoccupation with convenient blame - rather than openness to learning from failure - is a central factor holding teams and individuals back from improving. I think he is right.
Syed expresses admiration for the airline industry and its commitment to learning from failure - especially from "black boxes", the explosion-proof devices that record the conversations of pilots and other data. If the plane's wreckage is found, lessons - no matter how painful - must be learned. In the jargon, learning inside the aviation industry is an "open loop". (An "open loop" leads to progress because the feedback is rationally acted on; a "closed loop" is where failure doesn't lead to progress because weaknesses are ignored or errors are misinterpreted.) Syed presents harrowing examples from hospital operating theatres, of "closed loops" costing lives. Indeed, with its recurrent plane crashes and botched operations, the book takes the search for transferrable lessons to harrowing extremes.
One question prompted by Black Box Thinking is why is sport is not instinctively enthusiastic about evidence-based discussion. You might think that sports teams would be so keen to improve that they would rush to expose their ideas to rational and reflective scrutiny. But that's not always the case. As a player I often felt that insecure teams shrank from critical thinking, where more confident teams encouraged it.
The first problem sport has with critical thinking is the "narrative fallacy" (a concept popularised by Nassim Taleb). Consider this statement, thrown at me by a coach as I left the dressing room and walked onto the field after winning the toss and deciding to bowl first: "We need to have them five wickets down at lunch to justify the decision."
Hmm. First, even thinking about "justifying" a decision is an unnecessary distraction. Secondly, it's also irrational to think that the fact of taking five wickets, even if it happens, proves the decision was right. I might have misread the wicket, which actually suited batting first, but the opposition might have suffered a bad morning - five wickets could fall and yet the decision could still easily be wrong.
Alternatively, the wicket might suit bowling - and hence "justify" my decision - but we might bowl improbably badly and drop our catches. In other words, it could be the right decision even if they are no wickets down at lunch. What happened after the decision (especially when the sample of evidence is small or, as in this instance, solitary) does not automatically prove the rightness or wrongness of the decision.
Fancy theorising? Prefer practical realities? This kind of theorising, in fact, is bound up with very practical realities. Consider this example.
For much of medical history, bloodletting was a common and highly respected procedure. When a patient was suffering from a serious ailment and went to a leading doctor, the medical guru promptly drained significant amounts of blood from an already weak body. Madness? It happened for centuries.
And sometimes, if we don't think critically, it "works". As Syed points out, in a group of ten patients treated with bloodletting, five might die and five get better. So it worked for the five who survived, right?
Only, it didn't, of course. The five who were healed would have got better anyway (the body has great powers of self-recuperation). And some among the five who died were pushed from survival into death. Proving this fact, however, was more difficult - especially in a medical culture dominated by doctors who advocated and profited materially from bloodletting.
The challenge of demonstrating the real usefulness (or otherwise) of a procedure led to the concept of the "control group". Now imagine a group of 20 patients with serious illnesses - and split them into two groups, ten in each group. One group of ten patients gets a course of bloodletting, the other group of ten (the control group) does not. If we discover that five out of ten died in the bloodletting group and only three out of ten among the non-bloodletting group, then, at last, we have the beginnings of a proper evidence-based approach. The intervention (bloodletting) did more harm than simply doing nothing. It was iatrogenic.
Iatrogenic interventions are common in sport, too - such as when the coach tells a batsman to change his lifelong grip before making his Test debut. (Impossible? Exactly that happened to a friend of mine.) The angry team meeting is a classic iatrogenic intervention. Shouting at the team and vindictively blaming individual players, like bloodletting, provides the coach with the satisfying illusion that it works well sometimes. By "it works", we imply that the team in question played better after half-time or the following morning. Even having suffered an iatrogenic intervention, however, some teams - like some patients enduring bloodletting - inevitably play better afterwards. But on average, all taken together, teams would have playedbetter still without the distraction of a raging coach. (This insight helped win Daniel Kahneman a Nobel Prize, as I learned when I interviewed him.)
The great difficulty of sport, of course, is the challenge of conducting a proper control group experiment - because the game situation, pressures and circumstances are seldom exactly the same twice over. However, merely being open to the logic of these ideas, constantly exposing judgements and intuitions to critical thinking, takes decision-makers a good step in the direction of avoiding huge errors of conventional thinking.
That is why much of what Syed calls "black box thinking" could, I think, be filed under "critical thinking" - the desire to refine and improve one's system of thought as you are exposed to new experiences and ideas. Here is a personal rule of thumb: critical thinkers are also the best company over the long term. Critical thinkers are not only better bets professionally, they are also more interesting friends. Who wants to listen to the same set of unexamined views and sacrosanct opinions for decades? If you believe that your ideas don't ever need to evolve and adapt, can we at least skip dinner?
It is hard to imagine how anyone who is interested in leadership, innovation or self-improvement could fail to find something new and challenging in this book. Rather than presenting a simplistic catch-all solution, Syed takes us on a modern and personal walk through the scientific method. The book makes an interesting contrast with Syed's first book,Bounce, which proposed that talent is a myth - an argument that can be summed up in a single, seductive phrase: genius is a question of practice.
Rather than presenting a single idea, Black Box Thinking circles around a main theme - illustrating and illuminating it by drawing on a dizzyingly wide and eclectic series of ideas, case studies and lines of philosophical enquiry. The reader finishes the book with a deeper understanding of how he might improve and grow over the long term, rather than the transient feeling of having all his problems solved. The author, we sense, has experienced a similar journey while writing the book. Syed doesn't just preach black-box thinking, he practises it.
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