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."

Mickey's problem - The sacking of Australian cricket coach Mickey Arthur

Australia's recently replaced coach came up against an Australian cricketing culture struggling to come to terms with a new reality

Ed Smith

June 26, 2013

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	Arthur's track record of success with South Africa does not "prove" he is a brilliant coach any more than his track record of relative failure with Australia proves he is a bad one © AFP  Enlarge
Related Links Daniel Brettig : Arthur let down by coach-killers News : Lehmann's cultural remedy for Australia Players/Officials: Mickey Arthur | Darren Lehmann Series/Tournaments: Australia tour of England and Scotland Teams: Australia

One of the questions asked of Australian cricketers during the Mickey Arthur era was, "How did you rate your sleep?" The idea was to encourage a holistic approach to match preparation, in which mind and body worked together in blissful harmony.

From today, if a player complains about a poor night's sleep under the new coaching regime of Darren Lehmann, he should expect the burly left-hander to reply: "Should have had an extra couple of beers last night then, mate." As for hydration, Rod Marsh used to say that if you had to take a toilet break during the hours of play then you obviously hadn't drunk enough the night before. Being a bit thirsty in the morning has its benefits.

In turning to Lehmann, there is a sense of Australian cricket coming home. He is naturally chatty and quick-witted, with a keen cricket brain and an earthy manner. When he was Yorkshire's overseas player, I remember a close four-day match between Yorkshire and Kent at Canterbury. Before the start of the final day's play, it was agreed that both teams would enjoy a few drinks in the home dressing room after the match. Lehmann was free and unguarded with his perceptions and insights, almost as though it was a responsibility of senior players to talk about the game. You could also tell he was absolutely in his element in a dressing-room environment.

Context is everything, as Mickey Arthur has found out. As coach of South Africa, Arthur enjoyed an established side, a resolute captain and an experienced group of senior players. That played to his strengths. An affable and undemonstrative man, Arthur could operate under the radar. Graeme Smith, one of the strongest captains in world cricket, already commanded plenty of authority and a clear sense of direction.

It has become fashionable in modern sport to waste a great deal of energy fretting about "job descriptions" and "lines of accountability". In real life, however, wherever the arrows may point on the flow charts, power finds itself in the hands of dominant personalities. The real determining factor in the distribution of power between a captain and a coach is their personal chemistry. A shrewd coach will empower a captain and the senior player as far as possible. And when Arthur was coach of South Africa, there was no shortage of alpha males out on the pitch.

Now transfer Arthur into a very different setting. Where South Africa had a settled side that was enjoying sustained success, Australia are adjusting - or failing to adjust - to leaner years, having gorged themselves on two decades of feasting on perpetual success. Where most of the South African team selected itself, Australia have had great difficulty identifying their best XI. That is not a criticism. You try selecting the same team during a sequence of defeats and listen in vain for the pundits shouting, "Well done on retaining consistency of selection." No, losing teams search for a new combination that will bring better results. The much-worshipped god "consistency of selection" is partly a privilege that follows from success as well as a cause of it. There is certainly a strong correlation between a settled side and a winning team, but as mathematicians learn in their first statistics class, correlation does not always imply straightforward causality.

Arthur faced another problem not of his own making: the expectations of the Australian cricketing culture. This has been an unpleasant hangover after a hell of a party. For 20 years Australian cricket celebrated a golden age that would have made Jay Gatsby blush. In terms of cricketing talent, the taps overflowed with vintage champagne. To understand how good Australia were, simply remember that Lehmann himself only played 27 Tests.

	We used to hear how Australian cricket was best because they were mates who played for each other; Australian cricket was best because they were tougher and "mentally stronger"; Australian cricket was best because they had fewer first-class teams; Australian cricket was best because it didn't have to endure the "mediocrity of county cricket"

As any economist will tell you, the most dangerous aspect of any boom is the absurd way it is "explained" as a new and permanent paradigm shift (remember the view, just before the financial crisis, that modern banks had mastered "risk-free" methods?) We used to hear how Australian cricket was best because they were mates who played for each other; Australian cricket was best because they were tougher and "mentally stronger"; Australian cricket was best because they had fewer first-class teams; Australian cricket was best because it didn't have to endure the "mediocrity of county cricket"; Australian cricket was best because they knew how to enjoy a win and let their hair down; Australian cricket was best because they were "more professional". I heard all those theories put forward with huge confidence, often in tandem, even when the theories contradicted each other.

The difficulty, of course, came when results deteriorated, as they eventually had to. In a boom, you can have any explanation for why Australia were so good and still be proved "right". As a result, Australian cricket finds itself awash with voodoo doctors - convinced of their own prescience - rushing to pronounce the cure for a new and frightening malady called "average results". My own opinion is that the rise and fall of cricketing nations is harder to explain, let alone reverse, than most people seem to think.

Arthur's frustrating time with Australia reveals a broader problem. The whole notion of "a track record" is questionable, especially when the track record under discussion consists of a smallish sample size. Arthur's track record of success with South Africa does not "prove" he is a brilliant coach any more than his track record of relative failure with Australia proves he is a bad one.

Each phase of every management career is unique. The way any team functions can never be reduced to scientific analysis. As a result, credit and blame can never be exactly apportioned. We know for sure that some leaders experience success and failure. But exactly why, or to what extent they were responsible, will always remain partly a mystery. Coaches do not operate in a vacuum. What they inherit - the personnel, appetite for change, and attitude of the wider culture - matters at least as much as their methods.

Arthur encountered an Australian cricketing culture struggling to come to terms with a new reality. Quite simply, they aren't that good anymore. They may well get better under Darren Lehmann. But anxiously searching for miracles has a nasty habit of making them harder to find.

The problem with Indian cricket academies

Increasingly young players (and their parents) look at them as ways to generate returns on investment

Harsha Bhogle

April 5, 2013

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	Can a modern academy allow the talent of a Tendulkar to flourish? Unlikely © BCCI  Enlarge
Related Links Teams: India

A few years ago my son was protesting about the way he had to prepare for his ICSE exams. "I won't be tested on my knowledge anyway…" he started. "They only want to check if I can reproduce the answers that someone has already written." He was right, our education system seeks to produce homogeneous masses, production lines of identical students. This reduces us to excellent followers of a particular system.

I was reminded of that when I read Greg Chappell's thought-provoking article in the Hindu about how modern batsmen are struggling to "survive, let alone make runs, when the pitch is other than a flat road where the odds are overwhelmingly in the batsman's favour". He thinks it could be a result of academies that "do not produce the creative thinkers that become the next champions", and whose "highly intrusive coaching methods… have replaced those creative learning environments".

Even as academies mushroom everywhere, there is little proof that they are enriching Indian cricket and not merely providing another source of income to retired cricketers. It is a good exercise at social events to say, "You know, my son goes to such and such academy run by so and so former cricketer", but it does little else. My fear is that it thrusts eager children into another school of regimented learning; instead of the unfettered joy of hitting and chasing and bowling a cricket ball, they are checking out their stance, their foot movement and the alignment of the shoulder. That is like answering a question on five aspects of the architectural layouts of 16th century temples, instead of learning history. Sport can run the risk, as my friend Shyam Balasubramaniam says, of "becoming an industrial time and motion study".

You can see why academies flower in urban jungles like Mumbai, where playgrounds are cruelly encroached upon. With no place of your own, you get pushed into camps; cramped, crowded factories where you pay to become nobody. When you pay a stiff fee, you very quickly start looking for returns on it. Playing cricket becomes an exercise where returns are sought on monetary investment. Mumbai understands that language well, and so, caught between no space, long journeys and expensive gear, potential cricketers become insecure and feel the need to produce results quickly. The fun goes out of it, and fun is such a vital ingredient in producing a champion. When you are growing up, when you are learning, you have to play for no reward, and it is my thesis that that is where a financially driven city like Mumbai loses talent early.

And so as playgrounds vanished, as time began commanding a premium, as academies flourished and as experiential learning diminished, Mumbai started going downhill. They still win the Ranji Trophy but the only genuine international Mumbai have produced since Sachin Tendulkar is Ajit Agarkar in one-day cricket. One in 24 years is poor.

Chappell also talks about MS Dhoni, and of how he evolved his own style, unfettered by a curriculum. That is how it should be, with a player free to play in the way that comes naturally to him. Academies can then become finishing schools where you nudge a player a bit here, prod him a bit there but largely let him remain the natural player he is. I think that is best done when a player is around 16. I know that is the age when Tendulkar played international cricket but he was a freak; you cannot hold him up as a product of a system. Critically, Tendulkar was not over-coached; his heavy-bat, bottom-handed style would never have survived otherwise. What Ramakant Achrekar did was make him play matches, face different bowlers, different situations, and though his arm was on his ward's shoulder, though they talked cricket, Tendulkar learnt to play it by himself.

And so, accepting that Tendulkar is an aberration, and almost from another era, I am convinced that the best talent will come out of the small towns, where time and space are not rapidly perishable commodities; where a young Harbhajan Singh wants to bowl late into the evening with a revved-up scooter providing light. There are academies there too, but players who emerge from those places seem to talk fondly about their coaches, amateur sports lovers who give freely of their time.

If academies can retain joy, and provide time, they will give themselves a chance of producing unique cricketers. But if coaches and parents are looking at academies for a quick return on investment, they will continue to gobble up talent.

Britain's first state-certified sex coach

Unlike conventional sex therapists - who talk to clients having sexual problems and give them advice on how to overcome them - sex coaching can take place in the bedroom

Sarah Morrison in The Independent

 

Sunday, 13 January 2013

Jane walked up and down the street outside what looked like a nondescript house in north London three times before she summoned up the courage to ring the doorbell. The 51-year-old was about to have her first session with Britain's - and indeed one of the world's - first state-certified sex coaches. She was overwhelmed with nerves.

Unlike conventional sex therapists - who talk to clients having sexual problems and give them advice on how to overcome them in their own homes - sex coaching can take place in the bedroom. Its benefits can include anything from achieving better orgasms to simply feeling more comfortable naked with a partner. They can use a range of techniques: talk, role-play or intimate physical approaches like touching or massage.

Until now, this sector has been largely unregulated, and understandably scepticism has run high. But experts talk of a "booming industry" that is moving out of the shadows and into the mainstream. California has become the first state worldwide to certify sex coaches, but it is Britons who are its very first graduates. Jane's instructor, Mike Lousada, is so committed to the regulation of the sector that he is launching the first professional body for the industry across Europe later this year.

Lousada, 45, moved from the corporate world into sex coaching as a way do something "more meaningful" in his life. With his own hang-ups and "shame around the body," he became trained as a counsellor, and graduated from the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality last month as a sex coach. He now charges £80 an hour for talking therapy, and £120 for physical work, which includes genital massage, but can include having intercourse with a client. This would be in very rare cases; say to overcome a situation where a woman wanted, but wasn't able to, have penetrative sex.

Lousada calls his work "sex positive," differing from sex therapy which "arises from the point of view that something's wrong that needs to be fixed." He insists his services, often used by women who have been abused in some way in the past, is "boundaried" and run with a "strict code of ethics." He added: "'I'm showing people how to connect their bodies with someone else's. We are taught at school about pregnancy and sexual disease, but not about pleasure."

There are no recorded figures for the number of sex coaches in Britain, but one of the world's pioneering sex coaches, Dr Patti Britton, found there are at least 80 worldwide, when she conducted the first international survey last year.

Namita Caen, 46, from London, is another state-certified sex coach, working in California. She says interest in her services, which focus on talk, are on the increase as they become "legitimised": "Attitudes are totally changing; People are dying to share what's happening in their relationship".

Jane agrees. She had been living an asexual life for almost thirty years when she decided to take up sessions with Lousada. She said she chose to see a sex coach over a sex therapist, because her "issues were around discovering who [she] was as a sexual woman - in relationship to another." Engaging in talk sessions and intimate massage with Lousada, she said she is now "more comfortable with men" and able to "look in the mirror and see a sexy woman" again.

She added: "I find it fascinating that in the UK 'sex coaches' generally have the unfounded reputation of being some sort of prostitutes by another name - exploiting men and women who are either bored and rich or vulnerable and stupid. Mike's work provided me with a safe supportive environment where I could explore my sexuality as a woman and address the issues and hurts of the past."

The Department of Health advises that "people visit their GP if they are experiencing a sexual health problem" and some therapists have voiced suspicion of coaches lacking their accreditation. But Lousada hopes to change this. His professional body will be launched in the next few months: "Sex coaching is becoming a new profession. We need to have a code of ethics, a disciplinary code, and standards, in order to do this work safely."

Jane's name has been changed

When is poor form just randomness?

Ed Smith in Cricinfo

There is a nasty moment in the career of every coach or captain when he looks around the dressing room during one of his own team talks and asks himself the startling but pertinent question, "Who am I talking to? These words, these exhortation, these commands - who are they aimed at? Who do I want to be listening? Is anyone? And should anyone be listening, even to me?" 

And yet all captains were once themselves in the ranks, so they must still remember the days when they were among the non-listeners rather than the un-listened to. One colleague of mine kept a newspaper crossword (unobtrusively placed next to his left thigh) to look at during every team talk. As the coach yelled and blamed players, my team-mate would nod sagely, as if in agreement. But he wasn't nodding about the team talk at all; he was nodding in satisfaction at having cracked nine across.

And I don't blame him. In fact, the ability to tune out of team talks is a vital preliminary for preserving your sanity as a player. Why? Because cricket is a very difficult game to generalise about and because it is very rare that all the components of a team underperform simultaneously. Far more often - after any day's play - the dressing room contains a wide variety of individual performances. So why should a player who has prepared optimally and performed admirably allow his mood to be ruined by a team talk that is aimed entirely at someone else? Cricket is famously a team game played by individuals - a fact it is all too easy to forget when you are speaking to the whole team.

Look at England's performances in Test matches this winter and ask yourself what changed between the abject failures of Pakistan and the superb victory of the second Test in Colombo?

The bowling? No change - it was excellent throughout. The wicketkeeping? No change. The fielding? No change. The body language? A symptom rather than a cause. The team mentality? No change that I could discern. The effort and discipline? No change that I could pick up.

The difference was very simple: England succeeded in getting runs in Colombo where they failed to get runs in the UAE and in Galle. Only one element of their game had been problematic. And once England's batting was fixed - or fixed itself - the team returned to winning ways and preserved their status as the No. 1-ranked Test team in the world.

It is alarmingly simple. All that disappointment and suffering - the defeats, the soul searching, the media criticism, the frankly baffling idea that Andrew Strauss ought to be sacked as captain, and the barking mad suggestion that Kevin Pietersen was no longer good enough - it was all caused by something utterly straightforward: England's six frontline batsmen simply weren't scoring enough runs.

How can we explain the fact that so many good players were out of form simultaneously? The coach, Andy Flower, was typically self-critical in blaming the team's preparation for the batting failures earlier this winter. I have a different theory. England's collective batting woes did not necessarily have a direct "cause" of the sort that journalists and fans like to believe must always exist. It may not have been a question of effort or preparation or even collective mood.

Team batting failures are sometimes caused by the simple fact of randomness. What do I mean by randomness? Imagine the career scores of each batsman in the team printed in sequence on a piece on paper. It would look like a cardiogram - the upward spikes are the hundreds, the lowest points are the zeroes. Now imagine six of these cardiograms - one for each of the team's batsmen - laid one above the other on the same page.

	England's collective batting woes did not necessarily have a direct "cause" of the sort that journalists and fans like to believe must always exist. It may not have been a question of effort or preparation or even collective mood

If the same batting team stays together for a long enough period of time - and England's selection policy is very stable - there will inevitably be a time at which all six of the cardiograms are at a low point. Obviously this is a catastrophe for the team: no one is getting any runs! But it does not follow that the batsmen are slacking or the coaches are useless or the tactics are flawed. It really is just one of those things.

The question, and it is a hugely problematic one, is: how can we know if it really was random rather than "caused" by errors of approach and application? There is no complete answer to that. It is a question of judgement; and good judgement is what singles out the top coaches and captains.

The best coach I've ever worked with constantly used to ask if what everyone else was calling "form" was in fact randomness. When my team was bowled out for a low score, he'd say, "Did you actually bat badly? Or did you just nick everything?" He meant that sometimes the ratio of edges to plays-and-misses is unusually high. The underlying logic is important: it is a sign of wisdom not to draw too many conclusions from a small sample of outcomes.

If this coach sounds like a soft touch, don't be fooled. He sometimes asked the same question in reverse form when we won. He would shock me by saying, "You won, but for much of the game you were outplayed. I think you need to consider changes." The point - a point that most students of sport entirely miss - is that the foundations of lasting success are built on the correct assessment of a team's fundamentals: its ability, its cohesion, its discipline and preparation. Those fundamentals change slowly, and it is easy to misinterpret a random fluctuation as a fundamental crisis.

Look at other sports. Last autumn, after a string of defeats, Arsenal languished at the bottom of the Premier League. There was a clamour for Arsene Wenger, their superb manager, to be sacked - despite his stellar record of producing successful teams while also balancing the budget. Does anyone now believe that Arsenal would have recovered so brilliantly (they are third in the table and set for yet another year of qualification for Europe) under a different manager? No, what was required was for Arsenal's board and fans to hold their nerve instead of over-react to a small sample of poor results.

The same applies to this England team. They had a shock this winter. They are right to ask themselves tough questions about how such a good team lost four consecutive Test matches. But they would be wrong to think it is because they are picking the wrong players or have the wrong captain.