Go Local, West Indies
Mon, Oct 11, '04
(Trinidad Guardian)
Much has already been written and more will be, before and after the final announcement of the name of the new coach of the West Indies Cricket team.
Another name, Peter Moores, director of cricket at Sussex in the English County Championship, has been added to the others?Australia?s Greg Chappell and Bennett King?already announced as front runners to be the next coach of West Indies Test and ODI teams.
Despite the many voices raised at the apparent servility, and the lack of confidence and regard for the national coaches in the Caribbean and, by extension, in the people of the Caribbean, the WICB is bent on securing the service of a foreign coach, not the best coach, but a foreign coach.
The best West Indies teams did not have foreign coaches, nor did they have and depend on the technology that has been intriguing all concerned.
The assistance of computers in assessing the quality of players and in highlighting their technical strength, or more particularly, their weakness, can not be denied. But that can be done without computers, and has been done and continues to be done by experienced players using their intelligence and powers of observation.
The coach, the best coach, does not only get the player to have his footwork right and his hands properly placed to take a catch. He needs, even more relevantly, to get the player to recognise his own ability, his responsibility to the team and his country and even to himself; to play to the best of his ability. He must be able to get the player to buy into the concept of self-discipline, which covers a wide field.
Self-discipline demands of the player that he be fit always, even off season so that he will be in shape to be even better next season than before.
That is not done by wishing. He must adopt a suitable life style which entails eating properly, training regularly and with purpose, and avoiding excess in deleterious practises.
Therefore, the coach needs to understand his players, to have more than a rough idea of the background from which they spring. He must understand their social and educational experiences as either assets or handicaps in their development as persons and as players.
For this reason, the ideal coach of the West Indies cricket team should be a West Indian or, if a foreigner, he should have lived and worked here for a considerable period.
West Indian coaches have demonstrated their prowess internationally with considerable success.
One of the most exciting teams today is Sri Lanka. How many of the WICB members, I wonder, would remember that Sir Gary Sobers was the coach who took them to Test match status. Gordon Greenidge brought Bangladesh into Test status.
Conrad Hunte was influential in discovering and developing a new generation of South African cricketers, especially those who came from the townships.
Yet the WICB studiously denigrates and plays down the quality of its coaches. It selects a coach, gives him the responsibility to develop often weak teams, since 1995, and denies him the authority ,or the resources, to get the job done as well as possible.
This latest debacle is exemplary. Bennett King was offered the job as coach but he had an assistant. He did not accept and Gus Logie was drafted in as his replacement, but without an assistant. Men, who should know better, question Logie?s ability to assist the fast bowlers and wonder what Test team he had ever coached before.
Logie?s training is as good as Bennett King?s or Greg Chappell?s. He was trained at the Australian Academy and had the experience of playing on one of the most impressive teams that graced cricket?s history.
Using that ridiculous argument, since he had never been a fast bowler, what would Buchanan tell fast bowler Glenn McGrath to assist him? What Test team had he ever coached before he started coaching the Australian super team?
What Test team has Peter Moores or Greg Chappell or Bennett King coached?
The success of the coach is dependent on his own ability to recognise the psychological, intellectual and physical attributes of his players and to make the best use of them to produce a tough, self-reliant team-player.
It would be too much to expect the WICB to acknowledge an error of judgement, but let us hope the Board will have the structure in place for a coach to best carry out his duties and function.
Better, let us hope the WICB takes a look at the many eminently qualified West Indians before continuing their headlong rush to embrace a foreign coach.
