Management Madness

I blame John Buchanan. Not for everything, but for the current trend for management speak nonsense that permeates international cricket. Ever since Buchanan took a disproportionate amount of credit for the achievements of one of the greatest collections of cricketers in history, the trend has been for cod psychology masquerading as wisdom and team building. Shane Warne's view of the importance of coaches is simplistic, but the actions of too many current coaches smack of self-importance and management learned from text books written by lunatics. 

On the face of it, there's nothing wrong with asking players to come up with suggestions as to how to improve the performances of a struggling side, although in this instance it would have helped to have picked the right team and the right squad. Indeed, players should be actively encouraged to participate in discussions about how things are progressing, but to impose the task in the way that Mickey Arthur did, and his apparently regular use of email to contact his players, smacks of a man who is trying too hard to appear managerial and, instead, looks like a buffoon. He is, after all, managing a squad of seventeen players, all of whom are practicing together, staying together, travelling together and eating together - speaking to them, either individually or as a group, can't be that hard, surely. To then react by suspending four players (and what would he have done if seven players had failed to complete the task?) certainly seems to be excessive.

Of course we don't know all of the details, just as we don't know the details of the falling out in the England dressing room that lead to the ostracism of Kevin Pietersen. Michael Clarke has said that it wasn't an isolated incident although, not unreasonably, he didn't provide any further details. It's also true that it hardly seemed an onerous task for the players to carry out, poorly conceived though it may have been. After all, how long does it take to write fly out some proper spinners, drop Phil Hughes and replace the coach? 

83%

Glenn Turner was a remarkable cricketer. In a first class career that ran from 1964 to 1983 his list of achievements arguably make him New Zealand's greatest ever batsman. In first class cricket he scored just short of 35,000 runs at an average just under fifty, he is the only New Zealander to score a hundred first class hundreds, the only man to reach his hundredth hundred with a triple century and in 1973 he joined the select band to have scored a thousand first class runs before the end of May. 

His international record is no less impressive. At a time when New Zealand were all too often the whipping boys of international cricket he averaged 44.64 in his forty-one tests, twice carried his bat through an innings, converted two of his seven test centuries into doubles and in 1974 he made a century in each innings against Australia at Christchurch. Against the West Indies in 1972 he carried his bat for 223*, which is still a record for any test playing nation. His performances in ODIs weren't too shabby either: he averaged forty-seven and against East Africa in the 1975 World Cup he made 171*, a record score that stood for eight years. 

In amongst all of these remarkable feats, however, perhaps the most astonishing came at Swansea at the end of June 1977. Turner was ten years into a fifteen year career at Worcestershire when they took on Glamorgan in what appeared to be a fairly humdrum match between two middling teams (Worcestershire would end the season one place ahead of Glamorgan in thirteenth). There was nothing in the early stages to suggest that something unusual was going to happen as Glamorgan eased their way to 309-4 declared, a declaration that was forced after one hundred overs under the playing regulations of the time. Norman Gifford took three wickets and Mike Llewellyn, who later that summer would come within inches of hitting a six over the pavilion at Lord's, helped himself to ninety-one not out. With the pitch playing pretty easily and neither side blessed with a particularly potent bowling attack a fairly high scoring draw looked to be on the cards. 

Tony Cordle and Malcolm Nash had other ideas, however. Cordle had been a mainstay of the Glamorgan attack for years and Nash had reverted to bowling left arm seam up after his experiments with bowling slow left arm had ended in infamy at the hands of Garfield Sobers at the same ground nine years before. Both were decent county bowlers but now they ran through the Worcestershire batting with alarming ease.  Turner's opening partner Barry Jones fell for one, followed by Phil Neale (three) and Jim Cumbes (five). As the batsmen fell at one end, however, Turner was providing a master class at the other end. To give some idea of his dominance, numbers two, three and four contributed nine runs between them, but the third wicket fell with the score on sixty-eight. 

Cordle and Nash continued to rip through the rest of the batting and Worcestershire were reduced to 93-8 when Turner was joined by Norman Gifford. The redoubtable Gifford hung on while Turner attacked, eventually contributing seven to a partnership of fifty-seven. Paul Pridgeon, not noted for his batting, also hung on during a last wicket partnership of nineteen to which he contributed precisely nothing. After sixty-eight overs, Worcestershire had been bowled out for a paltry 169. 

Remarkably, Gifford's seven was the second highest score of the innings. While ten batsmen, including players as talented as Basil D'Oliveira and Dipak Patel, had contributed just twenty-seven runs between them, Turner had made 141 not out , a staggering 83.43% of the total. Unsurprisingly, this is a record that still stands. As for the match, it petered out into a damp draw, but those few souls who had ventured to Swansea had seen arguably the most extraordinary individual innings in first class history. 

Charles Bannerman

When Hamish Rutherford reached 166 in the Dunedin test he moved into the top ten highest scorers on test debut. Nick Knight, who was commentating at the time on Sky, mentioned this landmark, noting that he passed C Bannerman in the process. It was obvious from Knight's tone that he had no idea who he was, but Charles Bannerman not only holds a unique place in test cricket history, he is also the holder of a record that still stands today. 

Born in Woolwich, Kent, Bannerman was a proud New South Welshman when at around 1pm on March 15th 1877 he faced the first ball in what later became recognised as the first ever test match. He then had the distinction of scoring the first test run from the second ball of Alfred Shaw's over and went on to play the first great test innings. 

At the end of the first day, Australia were 166-6 but apart from Bannerman, who was 126 not out, no-one had passed twenty. At this stage Bannerman had scored a staggering 75.9% of his team's runs, a truly remarkable performance, especially as this was his first first class century and no Australian had ever scored a hundred against an English side before. 

On day two, with good support from Jack Blackham, the Prince of Wicket-keepers, and eighteen year old Tom Garrett, he advanced his score to 165 before a ball from Ulyett split his finger and he had to retire hurt. The Australian innings didn't last long without him and they were all out for 245, Bannerman having contributed 67.34% of the total runs. Astonishingly, this is a record that still stands one hundred and thirty-six years later and only Michael Slater, with 123 out of 184 at Sydney in 1999, has ever really come close. Perhaps even more remarkably, this was not only Bannerman's only test hundred but the only first class hundred in a career in which he averaged just 21.62. He played two more tests and then umpired a further twelve between 1887 and 1902, his first class career having been cut short by illness. 

Charles Bannerman wouldn't make it into the top ten Victorian cricketers by any stretch of the imagination and it is clear that he is all but forgotten today, but over two days in Melbourne in 1877 he played an innings that in some ways still hasn't been surpassed today and which has only just been knocked out of the top ten debut scores in test history, which is significantly more than Nick Knight ever achieved in test cricket.

All Round View

In the years following Ian Botham’s retirement and, some would argue, for a number of years before it, England’s selectors were so fixated on all rounders that they handed out test caps to just about anybody who batted above number nine in county cricket and also bowled a few overs. The thought of Derek Pringle batting at number six and of Mark Ealham or Phil Newport playing test cricket still makes me wake, screaming, in the middle of the night.

Now, however, it is Australia who are applying the ‘not good enough with either bat or ball so must be an all rounder’ logic or, as John Inverarity might put it, putting their faith in multi-skilled cricketers (he’s fooling no-one). There is a shortage of test standard spinners in Australia at the moment, but the selection of Glenn Maxwell as number eight batsman and second spinner, apparently on the basis that he’s a decent limited overs player and is called ‘The Big Show’ and so, therefore, must be good, was the stupidest selectorial decision since trying to shoehorn Cameron White, a better batsman but even worse bowler, into the same role a few years before.

It’s not even as if they can plead ignorance: England had already amply demonstrated this winter that a batting all-rounder and part time spinner, in their case Samit Patel, is not what is required in Indian conditions against Indian batsmen. Unless the Australian management team watched the Ahmedabad test with their hands over their eyes this should have been obvious, and yet the selection of the palpably inadequate Maxwell was their solution to the travails of the first test. It takes a special kind of genius to take a struggling bowling attack and make it worse, for the selection of Maxwell was compounded by the promotion of Xavier Doherty, a worthy trier and one day toiler who is also well short of test class, while Nathan Lyon carried drinks and Steve O’Keefe languished in Australia.

Of course defeat in Hyderabad wasn’t just down to the bowlers and it’s possible to sympathise with the desire for lower order runs given the feeble state of the top order in alien conditions, but when the next mooted solution is to play Steve Smith then you are in trouble. Smith may have improved his batting (although so has Phillip Hughes), but his bowling (forty-six first class wickets at over fifty-six) will make the Indian batsmen think that they are in heaven, or at least an all you can eat buffet.

Australia are hampered by the fact that their one proper all rounder is currently unable to bowl, although they aren’t helping themselves by labouring under the misapprehension that he’s a top order batsman, but this fixation with allegedly multi-skilled cricketers really isn’t doing them any good. There is a logic to playing Moises Henriques, especially in a side with two proper spinners, since he batted well in the first test and can operate as a useful third seamer in a five man attack, but they must stick to their guns with the rest of the attack and pick the best bowlers. It might cost them a handful of runs, but it may also give them an outside chance of bowling India out for less than 500. 

The Curious Case of Shane Watson

During the recent Twenty20 series between Australia and Sri Lanka Ian Harvey, a regular talking head in the Sky studio, was asked to look ahead to the composition of the Australian side for the forthcoming tour of India. His first observation was not that they would need to find players who could bowl and play spin but rather that Shane Watson should be fit and so would resume his rightful place in the top order. Now that the series is two tests old I see plenty of online comments criticising the make-up of the Australian side, but not one stating what seems to be the obvious: that Shane Watson is a useful all rounder when he is fit enough to bowl but that he is ill equipped both technically and mentally for a position in the top four of a serious test side.

When Watson was promoted to open the batting at the expense of the shell-shocked Philip Hughes it was a decision that was greeted with widespread derision. To Watson’s credit he performed far better than his critics, and his first class record to that point, suggested would be the case, but he now seems to be enjoying an enhanced reputation largely off the back of the fact that he was less rubbish than most people expected him to be. In forty tests he averages thirty-six with just two test centuries, a poor return for a player batting in the top four and one which would not be indulged by any of the other top test sides, particularly not in a player who is approaching his thirty-second birthday. Worse, he averages just 25.2 over the last two years, a period that has included a third of his tests and in which he hasn’t scored a single century. Without his bowling, which is going to be less relevant as injuries heal more slowly, and taking into account his fielding, which has all the athleticism and grace of a man running through knee deep mud, he simply isn’t worth his place in the Australian test side. It has reached the point where a Watson test innings can be predicted fairly easily: some crunching boundaries early on, a slowing down in the scoring rate once the ball is softer and the initial adrenalin rush has passed, a spot of comedy running and then a dismissal either playing around his front pad or pushing with hard hands outside off stump.

He deserves credit for taking on a challenge to the best of his ability when it was given to him and he remains a fine and destructive one day and Twenty20 player, but Australia will not improve in testing conditions until they accept his shortcomings and either play him as an all rounder batting at six or don’t play him at all. Given John Inverarity’s apparent enthusiasm for multi-skilled players and a general, if inexplicable, high opinion of his abilities I’m not expecting this to be any time soon, however. 

How do you solve a problem like Sachin?

With Ricky Ponting finally calling time on his test career, not before time, so all eyes turned to India and the struggles of another of the true greats of his generation. It seems almost inconceivable that it will be twenty-three years this summer since I first saw Sachin Tendulkar play, a seventeen year old in Sunil Gavaskar style pads who made his maiden test hundred at Old Trafford that summer. It was obvious that he was going to be very good, but his record in the years since is mind boggling. Comparisons with Bradman are pointless, but it seems very likely that his record of one hundred international centuries will stand the test of time in the same way that 99.94 has.

Now, however, he is an increasing problem for the Indian team and for their selectors. Having laboured to his hundredth hundred he hasn’t scored a test century for over two years, a remarakable statistic given his propensity for three figure scores. A fighting seventy-six at Kolkata aside, he struggled against England’s attack, scoring just thirty-six runs in his other five innings and it was clear that the England bowlers saw him more as an opportunity to precipitate a collapse than as a legend of the game. Sourav Ganguly has spoken of Sachin’s desire to finish in a blaze of glory with a big score, but the risk is that he keeps going in fruitless pursuit of that objective at the expense both of his legacy and of the long term development of the team. The announcement of his retirement from ODIs suggests that he is in no hurry to fall on his test match sword just yet, so the selectors may well end up with the dilemma of either being the people who terminated the Little Master’s career or of seeing him clog up the Indian middle order for as long as he likes. Rather them than me.

Farewell Punter

Great players deserve to go out with a bang but Ricky Ponting’s departure, following a heavy defeat in a series in which he averaged just 6.40, was the saddest of whimpers. The trademark swivel pull, once a stroke of withering power, had long since become more of a reflex paddle, and his footwork, once so sure, had become a shuffling, jumping mess. Where once his arrival at the crease had bowlers full of trepidation he had become a minor inconvenience to swat aside. For all that his many admirers willed him to succeed he had failed to see the writing on the wall, which by now was in pretty big letters, and the spinelessness of the selectors in allowing him to pick his moment to retire meant that it was always likely to end in tears. 

This is a shame, because I can’t think of many batsmen of the last thirty-five years that I’ve enjoyed watching more. At his best, and his best spanned quite a period, he was dismissive of all but the very best bowling, pulling balls that were only fractionally short and driving straight with power that seemed entirely incommensurate with the effort put in. Add his scintillating fielding just about anywhere into the mix and you have a truly great cricketer, although his greatness, in truth, never really extended to captaincy. Much of his tenure as captain was a success but this was as much due to the staggering talent at his disposal as to any spectacular nous on his part. The 2005 Ashes showed that his great side lacked a plan B, although the following series in Australia showed that the plan A had a lot going for it. He was a good leader of a great side for they, mostly, respected him as a great player in his own right, but once the retirements started and the side entered transition he was, understandably, less able to bring the best out of his side, although it was a challenge that would have tested the greatest skippers.

In truth, though, the light burned out some time ago, albeit with a brief flicker against India last winter. Since the start of the last Ashes series he averaged 108.80 against India and 20.14 against everyone else. Between the start of 2006 and the end of 2008 his average never dropped below 57 but it ended as 51.85 – still highly impressive, but not a reflection of the player that he was at his best. It’s easy to understand why he wanted to carry on after the Ashes series of 2010/11, but he would surely have been better advised to call it a day in triumph after victory over India rather than subjecting himself to a final series. As an unashamed admirer of his cricket, if not always his demeanour, I find that sad and can only hope that history remembers him as it should.