Seeing the sparkle in the eyes of the first batch of this year’s trainees at the National Cricket Academy was to understand why there is so much joy at coaching and passing on experience to youngsters. Coaches very seldom get their due unless he happens to be fortunate enough to have been one at the early stages of a player who goes on to become a superstar but otherwise most coaches do their work diligently and with lots of personal sacrifices and get little by way of recognition.
Their satisfaction lies in the knowledge that they have helped a youngster along and put him on the right road and then it is lots of hard work on the part of the trainee and no little luck that will decide whether he is a success or not. The player may go on to become the hottest player in the game and enjoying all the perks that come with it but the humble coach will keep waking up at the crack of dawn get into his battered car or in some cases scooter or even a bicycle and get to the ground as he has been doing for years and pass on his experience and know-how to yet another generation of players with dreams in their eyes.
Today of course it is just not enough to have playing experience but coaches have to undergo different levels of training. Even hardened Test cricketers are undergoing these coaching courses to get themselves the certificates that along with their Test caps is what is likely to get them coaching assignments somewhere.
The crucial aspect here is that there must be enjoyment in doing the job and if a person is a good communicator then half the job is done. With the kind of technical assistance available with video and computer analysis it is a lot easier to explain to the trainees what exactly is the area to take corrective action for the trainees are able to see for themselves on the monitors or screen where they are going wrong. A coach’s greatest strength is not just in showing where the trainee is going wrong but how to correct and improve on it.
While most players’ technique gets pretty much set by the time he is 18 years old and it is extremely hard to change after that, there are some fine examples though of bowlers who have modified their actions after playing Test cricket and still gone on to become better bowlers. There can be no better examples than two quicks from the Indian subcontinent, Imran Khan and Javgal Srinath who began their careers being chest on at the delivery and being predominantly in-swing bowlers to being side on at the delivery and being able to bowl the ball that left the right-hander. Their success tells you that technique can be changed if enough hard work is put in and then it is a far more rewarding experience.
At the highest level though a coach can be only as good as his team in much the same way as a captain is only a good captain if he has a team that is winning. If the team is not producing results no matter how thoughtful, a captain is or how good a communicator a coach is, they will not be recognized as good enough. There is the example of Geoff Marsh who was the coach when Australia won the World Cup in 1999. He then quit for whatever reason and after a break from coaching for some months took up the job as coach of Zimbabwe.
Since the time he has taken over as their coach there has been no noticeable improvement in the Zimbabwe side and its results. So was he a good coach only when he was coaching Australia who have a team brimful of talent and attitude or is he a bad coach because he can’t get Zimbabwe to be a competitive side?
The Zimbabwe situation is really a sad one and the game is suffering as a result. Nobody likes to see a side being beaten comprehensively match after match but even the best sides keep getting thrashed. England have lost all five Tests to West Indies numerous times and so have India been beaten in four out of five Tests of a series and sometimes in all three Tests of a series. Why even the former World Champions West Indies were on the verge of being whitewashed by England in the recently concluded Test series and but for the captain Brian Lara’s record breaking quadruple century they may well have lost all four Tests.
So what is happening to an inexperienced Zimbabwe team is something pretty similar to what has been happening to newcomers to Test cricket, Bangladesh. When Zimbabwe got knocked out for 35 in one of the recent One-Day games there were many who were quick to jump on the bashing Mugabe bandwagon forgetting that only a couple of years earlier the full strength Zimbabwe team including most of the striking white players had been dismissed for 38 runs. So it’s not as if the current Zimbabwe team is totally hopeless for history shows us that with the best available players too they can struggle.
Taking rigid positions leaves little room for settling any issue without one side feeling hard done by and hopefully better sense will prevail all round and the parties will take a decision that’s in the best interest of Zimbabwe cricket.
Nothing much is likely to happen till the current tour by Sri Lanka is finished but hopefully by the time the Australians get there the situation will be sorted out. If it is not then Lara is likely to be the player whose record had the shortest life. But being the champion that he is there will be no moaning from him that his record was broken against an ordinary attack. No sir, Brian Charles Lara is not just a champion cricketer, he is also a sporting human being.
