Coaching is an integral part of becoming proficient at cricket, but the idea of appointed coaches for international teams is relatively recent.
The traditional view of cricket coaching has been that it is relevant during a player’s formative stages, but by the time a player entered the national side, he would typically be considered more or less a finished product.
Modern thinking about coaching is different. There is a general realisation that learning—in any field, not just in cricket—is a life-long process. You can never master anything completely because there is always something left to conquer. A coach is supposed to help you go as far along this road of achievement as your talent and potential will allow. A good coach guides you to make the most of your potential, and a great coach manages to take you even beyond the limits of your gifts.
With this mindset, international cricket teams too began appointing full-time coaches, with the trend really taking off in the 1990s. Prior to this, all coaching-related activities—net practice, fielding drills, fitness routines, and game plans—were taken care of by the captain and vice-captain. There would still be a senior non-playing figure overseeing the team, but his role was to be an administrative manager. Sometimes the manager would be an ex-player himself, and he would get involved in the technical aspects. But often the manager, particularly in the presence of a forceful and dominating captain, proved little more than ceremonial.
Full-time coaches have been part of other major sports for decades. The three most popular games in America—baseball, basketball and American football—have always marked their high-stakes national competitions with ruthless tactics and methodical application. For each of these sports, the coach is regarded as the supreme executive figure overseeing strategy as well as operations.
It is difficult to directly transplant this paradigm to cricket, because cricket already has a strategic and operational executive in the form of the captain. Indeed, the primacy of the cricket captain as a team leader is unrivalled in the world of sports.Perhaps a more fitting model is to conceptualise the cricket captain as a kind of corporate CEO, with the coach performing the role expected of the corporation’s chairman of the board. When the company is doing well, the CEO is credited for the good results, and the board chairman simply sits back and basks in reflected glory. But when the company struggles, the CEO comes under fire, and the chairman is required to steady the ship.
The aptness of this model is borne out by the great teams of cricket history. Neither Bradman’s Australians from the late 1940s nor Clive Lloyd’s West Indians from the 1980s had any formal coach. And while the world-beating Australian team of the past decade did indeed have a coach or two, they never cut a prominent figure and few remember their name.
On the other hand, coaches who have taken over struggling teams and turned them around to reach the top have become widely recognised, even celebrated, figures. South African Gary Kirsten, who reversed the fortunes of the Indian team and guided them to the World Cup title as well as the number one Test ranking, is an excellent case in point, as is Zimbabwean Andy Flower, who has transformed England.
Pakistan, too, has had several prominent coaches, but their tenures have been rather mixed. Javed Miandad oversaw impressive successes during his two stints but was eased out after developing differences with senior players and the PCB bosses. Bob Woolmer also proved an effective coach in patches, but his relationship with captain Inzamamul Haq never recovered after the controversial England tour of 2006, and his tenure ended in disaster and death after Pakistan’s shock defeat to Ireland in the World Cup of 2007.
Waqar Younis, who stepped down recently, was successful in team rebuilding, but left under controversial circumstances after picking a fight with an icon like Shahid Afridi. Meanwhile other Pakistan coaches, such as South African Richard Pybus or Australian Geoff Lawson, had indifferent tenures and left little impact.
As the PCB goes about selecting a new coach, it is important to keep in mind the current team’s trajectory, dynamics, and spectrum of senior personalities. With the spot-fixing controversy done and dusted, there is a sense of closure and the opening of a fresh chapter. In recent months, Pakistan has enjoyed a healthy run of successes, and continuation of this streak depends critically on the incoming coach making a good fit with the team’s internal rhythms.
There is much talk of Australian Dav Whatmore being favoured by Pakistan’s cricket establishment, but this choice is likely to backfire. Whatmore is considered something of an Asia specialist; his famous credentials include coaching Sri Lanka to the 1996 World Cup title. But he is also known to be an imposing disciplinarian with stentorian methods. The current Pakistan team enjoys the services of some superbly accomplished players with ages well over 30 who are the pacemakers and trendsetters of this outfit; they will react badly to too much tinkering.
In any case, the fascination with a foreign coach seems badly misplaced when we have world-class people within our own country. Mohsin Khan, the current coach appointed on an interim basis, may not be everybody’s favourite and is also known to have outsized ego issues, but he certainly strikes a most reassuring elder-brother figure.
Perhaps that is all that the team needs at the moment. Moin Khan and Rashid Latif are other fine options –they can click with the boys, have substantial coaching experience, and their record of serving Pakistan speaks for itself. A four-member search committee, led by Intikhab Alam and comprising Zaheer Abbas, Col. Naushad Ali, and Ramiz Raja, is in place to finalise the appointment of the Pakistan coach. One hopes they will resist predictable temptations and make a commonsensical choice.