Coaches for senior cricketers

Do senior Test cricketers really need coaches? I wonder what does the Team India coach exactly tell Virat Kohli about batting?  And why is it that the Hazares and the Gavaskars never needed any coaching while they were getting those centuries for India? Or, for that matter the Chandrasekhars and the Duranis when they were running though the oppositions?

Honestly, I fully agree that in any sphere of life there is no end to the learning process. But then after a time that kind of learning comes from personal experience and not through verbal advice. What was it that Greg Chappell taught Tendulkar which the 10,000 plus batsman was already not aware of.

Or, is it that the modern Test cricketers are so very unintelligent that they cannot rectify their own mistakes?  Is it really true that today the experienced Test cricketers find no motivation in wearing the national cap? Do they really need to be goaded into doing their routine jobs by a coach with a cane in hand?

In Test cricket the first ever officially declared coach was Bobby Simpson. The chief reason for his appointment was that Australia had lost their best players to Kerry Packer in the late 1970s and that the new players were woefully short on experience of international cricket. Men like Alan Border, Graham Yallop, Peter Toohey and Rodney Hogg were just about starting off at the first class level. Bobby Simpson came out of retirement at the age of 40 to lead these rookies to a resounding series victory over Bishan Bedi’s much-vaunted Indians, including Gavaskar, Viswanath and Mohinder Amarnath.

Then with Packer and the Australia Cricket Board signing truce, the prominent Australian players like Denis Lillee, Greg Chappel and Rodney Marsh returned to the side but created internal dissensions to such an extent that the image of Australian cricket reached an all-time low: Marsh and Lillee placed bets against their own team; a weeping Kim Hughes resigned from captaincy citing lack of support and Australia came a distant 3^rd in their own group in the 1983 world cup.

Australian cricket had reached the nadir. Around this time the Australian Cricket Board appointed Bobby Simpson as the team’s coach to help rebuild the young team. Actually Bobby Simpson was not a coach but a mentor to inexperienced, young Aussies. By the next world cup in 1987, the Simpson-Border combine brought the world cup to Australia for the first time. This was the period when teams around the globe got into the trend of appointing coaches. The cricket administrators thought that just because Bobby Simpson had worked wonders, so would the other former players as well.

Generally these coaches were former Test cricketers with little or no experience of coaching. Invariably, the turnover of coaches became very high and only the best ones survived. Ironically the best ones happened to be either average Test cricketers like Dave Whatmore, Intikhab Alam and Geoff Marsh or just first-class cricketers like John Buchanan.

Coaching is certainly very essential. But not for Test cricketers. The best of coaches should be involved with the young players, especially between 13 and 19. That is the time when a young cricketer really needs to have the best of guidance.

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By the time a young player makes his Test debut, he would generally have played 5 years of representative cricket at various levels, beginning from school, college and age-based cricket tourneys. His actual process of learning would be over before he plays first-class cricket. Thus the best of coaches should be with youngsters during their formative years, especially till they are 19. This is the time when the talented youngsters need real guidance, encouragement and proper training. After they reach first-class and Test levels, which is generally between 20 and 25, the effect of coaching is considerably reduced.

The chief reason is that by the time a player is good enough to be a first-class player his technique and style are more or less ingrained. The first-class and Test cricketers too are not too keen to change their technique because they have already found success with the technique they have been used to. Thus if you had asked Sehwag to doggedly defend, he would have been a disaster. As would Dravid have been, if you had asked him to go for over-boundaries. The technique and temperament of players do not undergo any substantial changes after they have played cricket at the highest level for quite a while. No amount of Greg Chappell’s guidance could improve Ganguly’s leg side strokes.

It is time that we become pragmatic enough to realize that coaching of senior cricketers is only an eye-wash. Whatever coaching that can be imparted, can only be done up to the under-19 levels. This observation and assertion can lead to the obvious question: why do former Test players vie for jobs to coach current Test players?

The answer is very simple. Money, glamour and lack of effort. Today, at the highest level of cricket, the monetary benefits for coaches are astronomical. Most former cricketers after retirement find that they are not fit enough for any other well-paid job. Hence they make desperate efforts to become coaches of senior teams.

The second issue is glamour. After retirement, most former players face an identity crisis. They miss the glamour of the centre-stage. Hence getting hold of a coach’s job at the international level gives them the wide exposure that they crave for.

And thirdly the issue is that at the highest level there is hardly any effort involved in coaching. Since a coach is basically dealing with top quality players who are already well established, he has hardly anything worthwhile work to do. What novel concepts about batting did Greg Chappell taught VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid? For that matter, is Kumble really teaching the finer points of batting to Virat Kohli today?

 Frankly, at the highest level no serious coaching is required at all. A coach just goes on repeating the same age-old ideas from time to time. The modern coach has however acquired a new baggage: he carries psychologists, physiologists and other people from various walks of life to stun and stagger gullible people. The blah-blah of these people has nothing to do with the development of a cricketer. All this is for media publicity and nothing more.

 If representing the country cannot motivate a cricketer, nothing can. For men like Polly Umrigar and Pankaj Roy the national cap was the highest recognition. They would have given their lives for the honour of representing the national team. They were normal, intelligent people and had no time to think of themselves as psychic cases.

The Nissars and the Merchants, the Mankads and the Guptes, the Pataudis and the Viswanaths thankfully did not have to tolerate this irrelevant modern trend of having a headmaster with a cane in hand. Was it that they were far more intelligent and knowledgeable than the modern stars and were capable enough to look after themselves?