Gibson: A Coach for Whom Winning Does NOT Matter

Wed, Apr 6, '11

by RODWELL FORDYCE

West Indies cricket coach, Ottis Gibson, who has publicly berated the senior players on the team, has reiterated his stance that all of them are at risk of being dropped.

He constantly engages in threats and whisper campaigns to the media against these senior players. Gibson behaves like a vindictive bully, who hopes that his poor record as a coach will be overlooked, if he can only point his fingers and scream loudly enough about the perceived shortcomings of the senior players.

However, he must be suffering from a severe case of amnesia forgetting the two debacles of 2009. The first was in July of that year, when Bangladesh comprehensively beat the WI in our own backyard, as the WICB chose to use replacement players over the available senior players.

This mistake was then compounded by sending these same, second tier players to the ICC Champions Trophy tournament, only for them to come home winless.

Gibson is a destructive force who engenders a lot of bitterness amongst his players. Gibson encourages divisiveness along both regional and other differences. He asks players to be honest and open, but when they are, he proves to be a liar, by making threats and taking punitive steps against them, up to and including, dropping them from the team.

In contrast, India’s successful coach, Gary Kirsten, is beloved, respected, and admired by his team. At the end of the World Cup, their gratitude was displayed when he was carried on the shoulders of the team in a victory lap around the stadium.

This would never happen for Gibson due to his incompetence, mean-spiritedness, and abusive coaching style. If his record is contrasted to that of John Dyson, the former WI coach, Gibson’s record will be seen as one of abject failure, ever since he took over in 2010.

Prior to Dyson’s departure (and who can blame him for leaving this madness behind), the WI had just beaten England in a Test series in the WI. They had also won a test match in South Africa for the first time in history, and they were clearly on the upswing as a team.

It has recently emerged that during a team meeting in 2010, Gayle confronted Gibson, in an appropriate and professional manner, about the latter’s comments to the media regarding Gayle. He was only doing what was asked of him - being honest and open. Gayle even indicated that he wanted to remain captain of the WI team.

This is a team that holds Gayle in high esteem and one that likes him immensely. Additionally, at that time, it was a team that had had some of its biggest wins in the past few years, under the captaincy of Gayle.

However, Gibson blew-up and became very aggressive and threatening towards Gayle in the meeting. Subsequently, Gayle was stripped of the captaincy after this confrontation with Gibson and it was given to Sammy, a player who cannot even earn a place on the team based on merit, but who nevertheless, has the full support of Gibson.

In the last two World Cup games before the quarter-final, only four recognized batsmen were played. Why Chanderpaul was dropped against England and India, two of the teams that he has played extremely well against, remains a mystery. Despite this, he would return to make an unbeaten, top-score of 44 out of a total score of 112, versus Pakistan in the quarter-final.

This short-sighted attempt by Gibson to discredit one of the finest WI cricketers of this generation or any generation only reflects Gibson’s ignorance of the game. He has a poor record of managing the players. His batting line-up is seemingly put together by rolling a pair of dice.

Players are moved up and down the lineup like a yo-yo on a string (e.g., 9,7,6,3 for Sammy and 5,7,2,5 for Chanderpaul). They must dance to the machinations of their puppet master, Gibson. The good batsmen are criticized for not making enough runs, yet they are sent in too late and too low down the batting order to make any significant runs, as the later you bat, the fewer balls you will face, and the less runs you are likely to accumulate.

Unfortunately, Gibson’s lack of consistency with the batting lineup prevents the batsmen from focusing or planning their innings. Moreover, as stated, he does not send in the best batsmen first, thus wasting valuable overs with lesser quality batsmen at the crease.

Even young school boys seem to intuitively know that the best batsmen should bat first. Not Gibson! He sends in the most accomplished batsmen after the junior developing players have wasted precious overs trying to cope with the top order bowlers of the opposition.

Gibson fails to realize that batsmen do not just go in and slog, perhaps like he used to. They need to adjust to the situation of the game as Dhoni did in the final and Tendulkar did in the semi-final. The situation dictated that they initially start slowly, steadily accumulating runs, before engaging in an aggressive final push. They did not engage in hitting over the top and batting aggressively at the outset, as Gibson constantly harangues his batsmen to do.  

However, lacking an intelligent and coherent strategy, Gibson dictates to the senior batsmen that rather than bat on and accumulate runs, they should hit over the top. This foolishness ends up costing the WI early wickets. In the last three World Cup matches, WI could not even manage to bat out their allotted 50 overs.

 We constantly hear a drumbeat of how Chanderpaul bats too slowly. Instead of using Chanderpaul as an opening batsman, with his ODI average of about 42 and a strike rate of more than 70, around whom to build an innings, he is stupidly sent in late by Gibson and told to hit over the top, to be aggressive, and to score faster.

Gayle on the other hand, who is told the same thing, gets chastised by Gibson for being an irresponsible showman when he gets out hitting over the top, being aggressive, and trying to score faster.   

While constantly blaming the players, Gibson has already intimated that despite not having a contract beyond 2013, he will be coaching the WI 2015 WC team. He is clearly angling for a long term coaching contract and so he wants to get rid of the thoughtful, senior players who can offer any constructive criticism.

Gibson wants to control the younger players, while marginalizing those from different parts of the WI where there is little representation on the WICB. This systematic exclusion of players from certain countries, demonstrates both regional and other biases. Players from Guyana and Trinidad are targeted, marginalized, and only seem to get picked as a last resort.

In contrast, Coach Dyson always wanted to put the best team comprised of the best players on the field. He cared little for the corrupt politics of WI cricket and he was not interested in power, control, or self-aggrandizement. His only concern was about what was best for WI cricket, a complete difference from the dismal failure that Gibson selfishly represents.

A good coach values experience. A good coach inspires his players with confidence and is always truthful and fair. A good coach is able to take a good player and turn him into a superstar through fitness which includes strength training and flexibility as well as practice. A good coach is able to teach his players reasoning skills to always know what their job is. A good coach will teach his players effective self-talk to structure and encourage their performance and to make them mentally tough. A good coach exerts a calming influence on his team while building trust and cohesiveness within his team. A good coach is a parent figure to a group of players working towards a sense of family. Cricket is a game of high class strategy that requires good reasoning ability. Players must have a sense of predictability as to their place, position, and role on the team. What WI cricket needs right now is a good coach.

So maybe winning does not matter! Perhaps, like the WI Cricket Board, which is paid large fees whether or not it puts a winning team on the field, all coach Gibson is concerned about is money (reportedly collecting a salary in excess of a quarter million US$ per year), power, control, and self-aggrandizement.