Robert Haynes Unplugged
Fri, Oct 15, '04
Even at the 'ripe old age' of nearly 40, Robert Haynes can still match strides with the youngsters, as he showed recently by playing in the domestic One Day tournament for his club, Kensington. As a 17 year old Kingston College (KC) youngster, he started his First Class cricket career playing for Jamaica and then reached the big league, making his debut in the One Day International against Pakistan in 1989.
This tall leg spinner's stint with the West Indies team was sporadic. He came into the team during the glory years when fast bowlers ruled. Consequently, he played a mere eight ODIs and not a single test match. By the time he played his last match at the end of 1991, he had taken just five wickets in eight matches at an average of 44.80 and scored 26 runs.
Perhaps his First Class record is an indication of what could have been. Over the 14 years he represented Jamaica, Robert Haynes took 221 wickets in 65 games, at an average of 28.62 and an economy rate of 2.59. He scored 2166 runs for a first class batting average of 21.66.
It is at the First Class level that Haynes is now making his mark, as coach of the Jamaica senior team since 1998. The former West Indies all-rounder spared some time during the First Class season to talk 'on this and that' including his days as a player, the qualities of a good captain, the difficulties a First Class coach in the region faces, and what he thinks some of the problems in West Indies cricket are.
On learning of being selected for the West Indies...
I was playing league cricket in England in the Lancashire League and I got the news that I was selected. I think that somebody from the West Indies Board called my club. I was overwhelmed. I thought it would have happened before because I think it was 1984 when the West Indies team toured Australia, I had a very good season for Jamaica. There was a lot of talk saying that Robert Haynes would have been selected to go to Australia because they were looking for a spinner but they picked Roger Harper instead.
On the experience of playing with a winning West Indies team...
It was a great experience you know, when you're around players such as Viv Richards as captain, Malcolm Marshall, Jeffrey Dujon, Joel Garner, Gordon Greenidge, Richie Richardson and Desmond Haynes. I learnt how it was to be a professional. When you have the calibre of players like Viv Richards and those guys around you, they play hard cricket and they also play it very very seriously. As a youngster coming up, it was a good experience for me to learn to think the game out, and to learn to balance your cricket life and everyday life.
I also learnt that when you get to that level, it's a different kettle of fish; it's not like playing Senior Cup cricket or even First Class cricket. For me, it was a dream come true. At first I was mesmerized, especially when we were in Sharjah. I remember Viv Richards having a meeting and asking me what I thought and I just thought "wow, the great man wants to know what I think!" I think from there onwards, I realized that whenever you have team meetings it is important that everyone shares their view, because I think collectively you can learn a lot and I think it's just for you as a captain to really pick the right things out and apply out there in the middle.
On his short stint in West Indies colours...
I had wanted to play for West Indies for at least 10 years. I didn't play any Test cricket for West Indies. I had been on the test tour to Pakistan. I felt as if I could have played in the last test in Lahore judging from the wicket but it never happened. I wouldn't really blame the captain Desmond Haynes because he was going into the match with a winning team and he thought it would be best to keep his winning team. It just wasn't meant to be, so I'm just here coaching cricket for Jamaica.
I played in patches. Carl Hooper and Keith Arthurton came in. I think the disappointing thing for me is that I went into the West Indies team as an all-rounder and I didn't play a lot of games but if I got the chance to bat, I was batting at number 9 or 10, which didn't really make sense. I think my game suffered somewhat there because I wasn't properly introduced as a batsman to the international arena, but that's part of life.
Judging from the time that I played for the West Indies, when you looked at the calibre of fast bowlers that they had Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner, Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Ian Bishop, Ezra Moseley, and Winston Benjamin (my first room mate) it would have been very difficult to get regular games. So I do give thanks and praises that I was still a part of the West Indies team then when they were winning.
On the disappointment of not being selected after 1991 and what may have caused his non-selection...
I got injured in Australia in 1992 (hamstring) and coming back for Jamaica, I did well. I got wickets, probably 17 or 18 wickets. People would say it's not a lot, but when you checked around the region, Walsh was getting 30 wickets, and myself, Clyde Butts and Roger Harper were getting 17 a piece so it must have meant something. At the time, the fast bowlers were bowling well so I didn't bowl a lot of overs.
I think my batting improved a lot as well. I would say that I wasn't very consistent in my batting. I think my approach to batting was a bit way off at times. I got a little bit rash, hot-headed. My temperament wasn't what it was supposed to be as a batsman. I made a couple 90's and 80's in First Class cricket but never got a First Class hundred so that speaks for itself.
I dealt with the disappointment quite well, because at the time I was also playing as a professional in England and I was still playing for Jamaica and doing well. At times I would sit down and say to myself "why am I not playing for West Indies?" but I think the thing about West Indies cricket is that whenever you have been there and you haven't done well, whenever you come back at First Class level and still do well, they want to use a younger spinner. They went for somebody a lot younger than me, but I understood, disappointed of course, but I understood. I had no control over that.
On becoming a coach...
I stopped playing league cricket in 1997. I took my coaching exam in England between 1995 ? 1997. I can remember clearly that first when I took the Level 1 course there were a lot of West Indies players ? Roger Harper, Malcolm Marshall, Eldine Baptiste, Kenny Benjamin. We all took the Level 1 in Lancashire. I did very well and I was asked by Micky Stewart to do Level 2. Stewart was the Director of Coaching for the England Cricket Board.
In 1997 when I finished playing in England I then spoke with Easton McMorris and also to the President of the Jamaica Cricket Association (JCA), Jackie Hendriks, and they, in conjunction with the Sports Development Foundation, they sent me to England to do my Advanced Level course at Lillyshaw and I passed it. It was myself and Desmond Haynes as the only black persons there. I got the job to coach Jamaica. I went to Malaysia in 1998 during the Commonwealth Games as the Jamaica coach. Rohan Kanhai had stood down and I took over from 1998 and I'm still here coaching Jamaica.
I did the coaching course in England because of my job there. As a professional cricketer, they reckoned that the Work Permit office in England was saying that it can't be a job just playing cricket Saturday and Sunday. I would need some more qualifications to say that I'm working in England so they came up with this scheme where all the professionals should do a coaching course and then during the week you would go in schools around the country and help out. It also made sense because it earned you an extra buck as well when you were qualified. Doing the coaching course helps your game as well. You get to understand the game a lot more, theories and things like that. That was the main reason.
I should say too that when I first took the Level 1, it was Brian Breese the CEO now of JCA who really saw me in Jamaica and said I should go ahead and do it and go in the schools.
On the nickname 'Pro'...
I started as a professional at the tender age of 17 when I went to England. Courtney Walsh and I went up the same time. He went up to Northumberland, I went to Radcliffe in the Central Lancashire league and funny enough, the name stuck from there because in England they don't really call you by your name on the field, they call you 'Pro'.
On playing for Jamaica...
I enjoyed playing for my country for 14 years. I think I was treated badly by the Jamaican selectors. At age 30 I captained Jamaica, I got the most wickets for Jamaica, I came about 5th in the batting and I never played again. I was told by Chester Watson [a selector] that they wanted to give Brian Murphy, who was about four or five years younger than me, a three-year run. I remember Chester Watson coming over to Kensington saying that a leg spinner bowls well when he is mature at age 30, but I never played after that and I was very disappointed. Probably I didn't do as well as a captain but after performing as a player, I thought I would have still been given the chance to go out there and play for my country but it never happened.
During my years playing for Jamaica, I had a lot of captains. The first one was Lawrence Rowe. You had Basil Williams, Jeffrey Dujon, and Marlon Tucker. The best captain for me was Marlon Tucker, not because he was a KC old boy, but he was the best captain. He knew how to motivate players, he knew how to talk to a player. At times, when Marlon Tucker spoke with you, you felt as if you had gotten five wickets or more, or you had made 100 runs. He just knew how to deal with people and I think that's very important as a captain.
You have to be a people person. You have to learn to communicate with people and he did that very well and he also had a very great knowledge of the game. I thought that Tucker was born to lead as a captain, and after that I think that Lawrence Rowe was a very good captain as well. He really helped me as a youngster and I was very pleased with that. I think that my cricket could have improved a lot more if probably Lawrence Rowe had still been involved in Jamaica cricket. He would have guided me along that path.
On the early influences in his cricket life...
My father died when I was 2, so I had no Dad. But I think the man who has really been a father figure to me and helped me a lot was Jimmy Richards, my coach at Kingston College. He was the one who would pick me up, take me to practice, talk to me. He was the one who coached me in cricket when I just started and I must pay a lot of respect to him. He had heard about me from Randy Olson who was playing Sunlight Cup already for KC and he came and looked for me at Rollington Town and invited me to trials for KC.
The first year I turned out at North Street, I saw people like Billy Hunter, Nigel Paygon and Marlon Tucker and I turned back. I was only a little 13 year old skinny youngster and I saw all these big bearded guys and I turned back. I did! And the other year I went out, and I made the KC team and did well.
Funny enough, for all the years playing for Jamaica, well we had Rohan Kanhai as a coach, but Kanhai never really coached me so to speak. But one thing I can tell you, he had a great knowledge of the game of cricket but he didn't really coach me in the sense of being a spin bowler. He is somebody that I respect and I think I learnt a lot from him and I think this came from playing West Indies cricket when you had all the great players. I would sit down and listen to him and that is something that I try to do, to listen when people talk and see if I can pick up a few pointers from there, and it has worked.
On his coaching record...
We won the One Day tournament in 1999 under Courtney Walsh's captaincy. In 2000, I won under the captaincy of Jimmy Adams and Robert Samuels. We won in 2001 and 2002 and we should have won two cups last year (2003) and we got beat. We played some bad cricket and we lost, but still I went to a finals. This year, we are still in the Semi Finals so I'm hoping to take home another cup.
[Editor's note: After this interview, Jamaica ended up as losing finalists to Barbados in the Carib Beer International Challenge match.]
I still work for Institute of Sports. I go around Jamaica coaching cricket - myself and Robert Samuels, also Patrick Patterson. I'm seconded to the JCA.
On his coaching style and his observation on today's youngsters...
I look to take the positives. When I was around Viv Richards and those guys, they were always being positive. Whenever they were talking cricket it was always positive and I try to be that way, positive. I criticize people, but constructively. I don't just criticize you and leave you in the wilderness. I explain to you and tell you what I expect you to do.
I believe in working hard, and I believe that you should try and live a life where you could balance your lifestyle to play cricket because if you choose cricket as your profession, you really need to pay attention to it and to work hard and a lot of these youngsters now are not doing that. They are playing cricket because probably they say they could make a buck or two. But I am saying, if you want to make a buck or two you should perform to stay there to make more.
I like to win. I always love to win as a coach. I don't mind if I lose a game where the guys went out there and they fought, they really tried their best. I could pat them on the back and say "well tried". But I don't like when you go out there and you give away the game. I come down very hard on them. I point out where they went wrong. One of the best ways I work with these youngsters is to talk to them on a one to one basis. I think I could get more out of them that way.
The days of playing for Kensington as a youngster, I would stay back after a game and listen to Lawrence Rowe talking cricket and I learnt a lot from that as well. Growing up we used to play a lot of cricket on the road. When we played cricket at Lucas it was like a Test Match. These youngsters now, they come to practice, they practice for 20 minutes and they're gone. I think that if you are going to play at the highest level, you need to work hard. Their work ethics is supposed to be way up there. You have to pay attention to your game because it's for me to tell you where you are going wrong and to try and guide you, but if you don't want it, there's no way on Earth that I can help you. You have to want it. And then with both of us, with you wanting it and with my experience going to teach you and put you along the right path, then things will really work.
I think also as a coach you need to be understanding. You need to know who you are coaching, try and find out their background, how you can deal with them best. I think that the players like somebody that they are comfortable with, in the sense where they could relate to them, not having problems and choke on it. They could come, and we try and work certain things out and not just about the cricket, but things that happen generally in life, they could come and explain and I see how I could try my best to help them.
On his strong points as a coach...
I think my strong point is to be able to point out things when they are going wrong. I also don't beat around the bush; I talk to you dead straight. I don't hold back things that way. And also what works for me is that, if I say something that the players don't agree with, they can come back and argue it and we could sit down on a one to one basis and we discuss it. I hear their view and then we see where we can work from that. But I think my strong point is basically hit the nail on the head, tell them when they're doing wrong, and tell them if they're doing well.
But I think one of our major problems in the West Indies is that when a batsman makes 100 runs, everybody forgets the faults he has and I try to point out to them that if you had done this during that 100, probably you would have made 150 and I think that's where we need to look as well, not just to say "well played" and leave it at that. I try to explain to them and go into details and say "although you made 100 runs, your head was falling over too much, probably you weren't moving your legs to the pitch of the ball" and so on.
On things he would like to improve on and the difficulties coaches face...
What I would like to work at more is to get more into the videotaping of cricketers. For me alone it would be difficult at times, so having an assistant, somebody who can do the technical work and where we can sit down, analyze, that would help. I remember the first time when I came back coaching in Jamaica I came with my video camera and it was like a big joke to everyone. They weren't using it. I'm still using it but the thing about it is that running a net session where it's me alone with 30 guys, it's not easy to be running a video recorder at the same time, so if the help comes along where you get somebody to do the technical stuff with the video and then we could sit down with the player on a one to one basis, or with the team and then at the end of the day's play, we go over what we need to go over, that would be good. I think as a coach, it's best to paint a picture than to talk to somebody. So in that aspect I would like to improve.
Also what I would like to improve on is being able to spend more time individually with the players. As I said having 30 odd players in trials it's difficult when you have to be sharing your time with each and every one because as a coach you can't really have a favourite. You have to try and work with everyone although you have players who are more talented. That's what I would love to do, spend more time with the players. It's going to take a lot more financing for this to happen.
On who he has learnt some key things from...
From Bobby Simpson coming to Jamaica, I have learnt to break down the training session into smaller groups because as a West Indian, we normally like a fielding practice where we have 20 guys taking a catch and I learnt that we can break things down. Also that when you're dealing with coaching batsmen it's good to get straight to the point but when you get to the point, you need to also explain to them why this is so, and why they should do this.
I think that somebody that I respect a lot also when you talk about what helped me, somebody like Junior Bennett at the U-19 level because whenever we get together, we always rap about cricket. I believe that Junior's cricket coaching has been a feeding tree for the national level and I do have to work a lot with him. He's a very knowledgeable person of the game and I am pretty still young at coaching and I try to gather all the experience that I can.
On discipline, conduct and some of the things wrong in West Indies cricket...
Every team has problems with discipline. Jamaica, we have had problems with discipline, nothing that we can't really deal with. However, I think that one of the most upsetting things to me right now in West Indies cricket is that we here in Jamaica will have a structure where our youngsters will abide by certain rules and regulations, but as soon as they get to the Test team, it's all gone through the door because there is no discipline at the top.
To me, just from looking on from outside, it's like each player does as he pleases and when they come back to the First Class level it's like they are monsters. They leave here as a saint and they come back as monsters and it's wrong. I believe that if we are working from this level, we need to communicate and that is lacking in West Indies cricket. Nobody communicates. Even with Jamaican players going to the Academy, I have never seen a report on a Jamaican player who has been away for three months, so basically every time I get these players again we're starting over because they don't know what I was working on, I don't know what they're working on and I think this is a communication problem.
I think also the West Indies need to put certain things in place, where they have rules and regulations. I am seeing West Indies players taking pictures with a sponsor with their shirt down to their knees. I don't like it. You have youngsters coming up, they see these guys as role models so they need to look the part. This is where they need to look at the code of conduct. We also need to stop this thing about people wearing the baseball cap turning it back to front on the cricket field. I don't like it.
On a personal note...
I'm married, I have three kids, one from a previous relationship. My oldest son is 16 ? Robert Haynes, Jr, my daughter is five - Robin Catherine - and my youngest son now is two years old ? Nathan Edward.
On what he would like to be doing in 5 years time...
I hope I will be spending more time with my kids. I will be in my rocking chair not being an old man but probably having my son and my daughter sitting in front of me doing some homework (he smiles).
I would love to be coaching but in Jamaica, coaching at the highest level, I really think I could get some more support. I think it's very difficult, it's very stressful at times. But I love cricket, I enjoy coaching cricket. I like these youngsters. I think I could pass on things to them that I never really got as a youngster and probably one of the good things is that I've been to every level of the game although I've never played Test cricket but I've been around Test cricket. I'm still learning bits and pieces even from the players that I'm coaching. I'm learning from them.
