Howard: 'Manager Must Have Teeth'

Interim West Indies manager Tony Howard makes no bones about describing himself as a ?no-nonsense kind of person? and it?s easy to see why. An old-school stickler for hard work, preparation and discipline, Howard makes it clear the team manager ?must have some teeth.?

?The manager must have some teeth. If he doesn?t have any teeth, personally, he?s a waste of time,? Howard declared. In this wide-ranging interview with CaribbeanCricket.com?s Michelle McDonald, the 56-year-old talks candidly about his experiences with the Barbados team and the future of West Indies cricket?

Tony Howard: I?ve been Manager since 1998. In that time, we?ve won seven titles. It?s all about preparation and hard work. That?s all. It?s not a secret. We?ve been preparing better and longer than most of the other teams and, as a result, we are fitter than, and we think the game better than they do.

MM: Tell us about those preparations?

TH: The coach has a regimen through which he puts the team over a period of months. Usually, what we do is give them a month off after the regional series and then we start the preparation for the Red Stripe Bowl which we expect to be in October and that reaches a crescendo somewhere about September.

MM: You talked about the mental part. What are some of the things that you do?

We do a lot of on field work, but after that there is a lot of discussion on cricket, the pros and cons of cricket, the techniques that we use, but then we also do little psychological exercises outside of that. These exercises get the guys thinking about other things. I?ll give you a small example. Years ago, when I was a Scout, we used to do something called Kim?s game and Kim?s game is something where I have a cloth and it has 16 or 18 objects on it. I put it on a table for a minute and then I take it back up and then I ask you to tell me what was there. That type of thing. You have to start to work on seeing instead of just looking. That helps when you?re batting because you?re actually looking at what the ball is doing rather than just seeing the ball.

MM: Whose idea was it to introduce those kinds of exercise?

TH: Those are things that I?ve been exposed to and that I?ve experienced. I?ve used and brought little tools like that into the preparation of the team and I?ve found that it works. It is a fun thing but at the same time, it?s training your mind to work.

MM: And I guess it helps with team building as well? Barbados seems to be a strong unit?

TH: Oh, definitely. We are a very strong unit and despite the fact that we?ve had to bring in and take people out at different times for varying reasons, that strength stays.

MM: You used to be a player. You replaced Lance Gibbs in a Test match in Guyana. Tell us about that experience?

TH: I used to be a player a very long time ago. I played from 1966, the year of the inaugural Shell Shield. I played under Sir Garfield Sobers and David Holford and those teams were very successful. As a matter of fact, I can only remember losing one game. I don?t remember losing many others, but that again is a part of the psyche that we built up in the squad and that?s the kind of thing I try to teach my team that winning is a habit and that the more you win, the easier it becomes.

Losing also has the same effect on the other team. The more often they lose then it becomes easier to beat them because whenever they turn up, they turn up to come second every time. I think at the beginning, the guys thought it was a little unreal, but more and more they?re beginning to believe it. As a matter of fact, when we won on Sunday, one of them said to me ?Manager, it works? and it does work.

You could imagine the stress of replacing Lance Gibbs in his home town. Of course, one could never replace Lance Gibbs. He was a spin bowler par excellence. But having had the opportunity, I thought I did reasonably well, in a very high scoring game. There were really only two and half innings or something like that. They made 580 odd. I bowled 60 overs and got 2 for 140 which I thought at the time was not too bad considering that we only got 3 wickets, but that was the end of that. (EDITOR?S NOTE: Scorecard of Tony Howard?s only Test match).

MM: What did you do after that match?

TH: I went back to playing for Barbados and working hard at cricket still and trying to impart some of what I learnt on the circuit to my club team, Spartan. There is only one club! Spartan Club. I worked with them and I?m still a member of the club. I played with them up to last year.

MM: In the Masters? (asked tongue in cheek)

TH: No, no, no. I have a unique celebration there if you like. We won four Cups and I was the member of every team. I was a member of the regular First Division team. We won in the Premier zone and I was a member of that as well. The Over-40?s and the local knockout, I was a member of that team too.

MM: It would seem then that success follows you. How are you going to try and translate that into your new role as interim manager of the West Indies team?

TH: Success doesn?t follow you. You have to work at it. It?s a great feeling to be successful at anything you do, but of course, one never sees the work behind the success and we always think it?s automatic. I never forget hearing Gladys Knight and the Pips singing ?Midnight Train to Georgia? and I said ?where these guys now came from?. When I did a little background check, they?d been on the hotel circuit for about 30 years before that, so it?s the work behind, and that?s what we?re going to try and inculcate in the West Indies team that guys, this is your job.

When we go to play cricket at the Test level, you?re in the office and that?s the kind of culture that I want to bring in where you?re going to work pretty hard. We know that we?ve got to produce the product at the end of the day; we?re going to work to get that product to present it to you on Test match day.

MM: In your first press conference, you described yourself as a ?no nonsense type of person.? What exactly do you mean by that?

TH: Cricket is supposed to be a fun game still and I believe and I expect all my charges to understand that. They have to have fun at it, but at the same time there are certain disciplines that you must carry with you. There are certain things that we don?t stand for. We don?t stand for anything that will misrepresent what we?re trying to produce for the West Indies and that?s the kind of thing I?m talking about.

When I say I?m a no nonsense person; if we have the rules, and everybody understands the rules then those are the rules and nobody breaks them without exception. Again, with the Barbados team we?ve managed to get that going. I don?t set the rules in a vacuum. What we do is we get together with a sort of representative unit of the team and we say ?okay, what are the rules what are the standards we want to set?? Once we set those standards, then everybody has to adhere to the standards, without fail.

MM: Have you been able to do that as yet with the West Indies team?

TH: I?ve started that but I?ve only been on this job for a few days. I?ve had initial discussions with one of the players who I think could help me in this regard and I?ve asked him to source a couple of players who would be able to do this job and he?s readily accepted and he?s working on that. So, when they come back to me with what the standards are and what we expect from this team, then we?re going to put that in place, and we?ll discuss it with the team.

MM: I know one of the standards which has been talked about, or lack of I should say, is the dress code and how players dress when they?re not on official duty, for example coming down to breakfast, walking around the hotel lobby. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think that there should be a dress code outside of the official function attire?

TH: Well, I always ask my players never to embarrass themselves and dress codes of course are going to vary depending on where you are. We?re home now and I expect you to be properly dressed at all times. I don?t expect you, for example, to go to dinner in shorts. It won?t happen. There is also a penchant to wear our uniform in the wrong manner sometimes. Those things won?t happen here.

MM: So, for example, wearing the cap backwards, that?s something that you will be looking to change?

TH: Correct, we?re going to work on that. And what I want to do, I don?t want to set laws because that?s not what it?s about. I want the players to understand the reason why, why they shouldn?t do this, and I know once they understand why not, the won?t do it anymore.

MM: What challenges do you see in getting that across to the players, especially as they come from different backgrounds, different cultures where it?s perhaps acceptable to carry themselves in the way that some of them do?

TH: Certainly, it?s acceptable given the environment in which you operate in on a day to day basis but what one has to try to get over to them is that you have to make the difference. You don?t have to sit down and wait for anybody else to make the difference. You can change the environment that you?re in just by being different. So that?s what we?re going to be doing. They?re going to be change agents. We?re going to try and work on them to get them to accept that, as very visible people in the West Indian context, they have to set the standards and not be part of the accepted norms.

The previous manager said that he was held responsible for things that he had no control over. Now the WICB has mandated vice president Val Banks to make recommendations on the management structure. What recommendations would you make in terms of the role of the manager?

TH: Well, it would be presumptuous of me to say what it is because I really don?t know exactly what context he (the previous manager) operated in.

MM: Right, but what are your personal thoughts about what the function of the manager should be?

TH: The main function of the manager in any organization as far as I?m concerned is to be support service to the players and workers and he must be able to set the parameters in which they?re going to operate. He must be able to have some sanctions if those parameters are broken so that?s broadly what I?d like to see happen where the Manager must have some teeth.

If he doesn?t have any teeth, personally I think he?s a waste of time.

MM: I imagine, too, that the manager would be responsible for bringing about cohesion within the unit. For example, we hear often of a rift between the captain and the coach. How do you plan to address that?

TH: Well the best way to address any situation of that sort is to have the parties come together and put their cards on the table. It?s not the easiest thing to do. We?re not exactly creatures that love criticism and that?s a critical thing it is being criticized. We?ve already started to look at all those little, if you like, rumours and have started to put things in place to make sure they don?t become a problem.

Once the parties come together, and we have started to come together, and we put all our business in the open and where we stand on certain issues, we?ll get it taken care of. We don?t have to agree on them all but we have to accept that everybody else?s point of view need not necessarily be ours as long as it doesn?t interfere with the way that we operate. I think that we?re starting to see that there is some area where co-operation can be had and once that happens I am sure you?re going to see the benefits of that coming back to the West Indies team.

MM: What can we look forward to the rest of the Test series?

TH: Let me be very frank with you, I don?t understand anything other than winning. I don?t know what the other stuff is, it does not form part of my itinerary so my first order of business is to stop the slide. We?re on a downward slide and in order to do anything about it, one has to exert enough force in the opposite direction to stop the slide first, and then once we stop the slide to start carrying the slide back in the other direction.

It is my opinion that once the momentum changes, you?re also going to see changes in the attitudes of, and certainly the presentations of, the West Indies team. Our players must be experiencing some kind of trauma with the manner in which they?re being beaten, so we have to work on some egos as well and stroke some confidence areas and so on. Once we get that going, I guarantee you things will turn around. We have as much talent here to beat anybody anywhere. We now have to mesh that talent and get all the players to focus in the right direction.

MM: Did you apply for the job or were you approached to take over (from Skerritt)?

TH: I had applied some time before, and unfortunately I wasn?t given an interview at the time. This time I was asked if I would come in as the interim manager, I suspect maybe I because I happen to be involved at the time that this was happening. I was actually in cricket at the time and happen to be getting the result that nobody expected me to get so that may have had a little sway.

MM: What is the biggest contribution you think you can make to this team? Why do you think you can make a difference?

TH: Don?t forget this is a two way street, myself to the team and the team to me. I think that what this team sees of me is that every time that they?ve met me before, I?ve always beaten them, so I must be able to bring something to the table that helps them to win, and I think that could be my biggest contribution. I can help build their confidence where they say ?he can do it with the Barbados team here there and everywhere, he must be able to do it with us as well.?

MM: Having several Barbadian players on the team would also help?

TH: It doesn?t hurt at all because the basics that I try to inculcate in the Barbados team is there in all these guys and so they?ll be able to be part of the transition. They?ll be helping me to get the message over to these other players of the things that I stand for and the results that I expect.

MM: What happens after June 30 when the job of interim manager expires?

TH: I certainly hope that the results that we achieve in the interim would be advantageous for us. I?d like to be able to continue in this function. When I took the job as the Barbados manager, the circumstances were not dissimilar. This type of thing we are talking about is a process, it takes a while to be deep rooted in the psyche of the players to get them into this believing that they can?t be beaten. It takes a while for that to take root.

Like I said even up to this year, in the last game [Carib Beer International Challenge final], a couple of players were saying ?come on Manager, we?re really going to win this one?? and I said ?come on guys, you know me, there is no other option?. I?m a firm believer that your mind is a very, very powerful tool. We don?t use much of it but if you start to believe in failure or think you?re going to lose, your mind takes that and makes it reality for you.

Similarly, if you know you?re going to win, your mind just does that for you. I?ve definitely been part of that. I?ve been in situations before, the old people call it ?Trust in God?, but what I do is put it in my mind and go to bed on it and at the end of the night, I have a solution. And I know that works. Similarly with winning, you put it in there, the mind takes it, makes it a reality for you and gives you the solution to come out a winner.