Comment
THOSE who actually know him well, and others who only profess to know him, seem agreed on one feature of the saga over Kevin Pietersen and the England captaincy.
It is that his personality is such that he would have to be in complete charge. If there had to be a coach at all, he would be his choice. So would the rest of the staff.
Shane Warne, the legendary Australian and his captain at Hampshire, and other trusted cricketing pals were mentioned in that regard.
As a player in the ranks, Pietersen knew coach Peter Moores and his way of doing things and they did not tally with how he planned to run the show.
He reportedly told the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) as much on his promotion following Michael Vaughan’s resignation last August. After that, the wreck that followed was all but inevitable.
The controversy has the stamp of the West Indies all over it except that our internal upheavals have been of a lower key. The media in the Caribbean simply does not have the clout, or the taste for sensation, of the British.
Of the nine head coaches since Rohan Kanhai was the first appointed in 1992, six have been replaced before their time. Three were successful captains and absolute icons of West Indies cricket.
The board got rid of Kanhai after certain players complained about his methods. Andy Roberts’ stay was equally brief. Clive Lloyd had a short period in charge before he was converted into manager to make way for the late Malcolm Marshall.
To the ire of his fellow Antiguans, Viv Richards was stood down after less than a year in the post and Roger Harper took over.
Gus Logie and the Australian, Bennett King, the first foreign coach, were the others who subsequently did not see out their contracts. Harper went of his own accord – and with a great sense of relief.
None has made a difference. As long as the structure of West Indies cricket remains as shambolic as it is, no coach, or captain for that matter, ever will.
As with the Pietersen-Moores mess, the question such constant chopping and changing raises once again is obvious. Is a coach necessary?
It is a comparatively new concept for cricket and it is not clear where it came from. As with so much else, it might have been borrowed from American sport in which the head coach is supreme.
Ian Chappell was one of Australia’s most successful captains in an era when, as he puts it, a coach was the vehicle that carried the team to and from the ground.
For Chappell, the captain, and only the captain, should be responsible for his team. In his time and before, leaders might seek and be given advice by trusted lieutenants under them and by wise old heads outside the ranks, usually retired players who were managers. But the buck stopped with them.
It is a philosophy clearly shared by Pietersen and certainly by the great skippers of the past, except that, for them, it was never an issue. They simply did the job.
Certainly, they would have appreciated the travelling army of support staff now attached to every team – to assist with arranging practice, with technical and psychological help to players who need it, with building up and maintaining fitness, with sharpening up the fielding, with dealing with the media. But the captains always ran the actual cricket.
Perhaps, with no head coach for their forthcoming tour of the West Indies but, instead, specialists in specific areas under the direction of the captain, England might start a revolution in reverse.
It would take a complete U-turn for the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) to follow suit. Four years ago, it issued a directive that carried the importance of the head coach to the extreme.
The coach would, explained then WICB president Teddy Griffith, be a member of the selection panel, with the casting vote, and be “the principal authority” on the selection of the eleven to take the field.
“It follows, therefore, that he will be accountable for the performance of the team and will be judged accordingly in relation to his contract,” Griffith added.
Soon, Bennett King and his staff – all Australians chosen by him, as Pietersen sought to do in his position – were facing a board investigation into the continuing dismal performance of the team under them.
It was a blatant cop out. The investigation should have been directed at the board itself.
Where the best, and highest paid, coaches should be is not with the Test team, where ways are set, but with the developing young players, passing on their knowledge and eliminating the bad habits now so evident in current players.
The problem is that there is still nowhere for such a facility. WICB chief executive Donald Peters gave December 15 as the date for the launching of the long promised academy at the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill.
Significantly, he did not state what year.
