cricket

Some things change, some stay the same.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

So what are our memories of this universally enjoyed Cricket World Cup going to be? Or rather what’s the general feeling going to be – we’ll all have moments but what what’s central, or seminal, or telling? For me there’s something tectonic and vital and mostly positive gone on, to do with the gear-shift towards more explosive and exciting action. People hollering and whooping more; more crash and bang, more fireworks; more freedom than ever from those wielding the willow.

Not everybody wants that, of course. Some would honestly have preferred scores to be tightly contested around the 250 mark, with cute hands and daredevil running and imaginative bowling being decisive, rather than belligerent hitting on an epic new scale. Some would say we’ve gone further away from ‘proper cricket’. The Warners/Finches/Maxwells and McCullums have redefined what’s feasible, through stylishly-brutally marmalising the notion of what 50 over batting looked like – particularly in the early phases. There’s no polite reconnaissance of the bowling now… it’s a carve-fest from the first delivery. Some regret that.

I think it’s truer and fairer to say that this is simply and increasingly a different game. It’s barely the same genus as Test Cricket, let alone the same species. And because the world’s changed, because kids and teens and maybe all of us are hot-wired now into orgasmic boomathons, there’s likely no going back. But that different game – the one where a screw is turned slowly, or a plan hatched over time – can run beautifully parallel.

It seems certain to me that this Proper Cricket thing may need (may need to rely on?) the support of its adrenalin-soaked bi-product. Don’t faff with Test Cricket, mind; its quiet majesty or deep dull glories really should be preserved in a kind of tamper-proof aspic. We can surely identify this as the authentic cricket experience – the soul of the game – and let the riot-in-a-brothel next door rumble on. So don’t go phoning The Rozzers, grab a beer and a flag and maybe some fancy dress – get into it!

World Cup 2015 was magic. Electrifying and sporting enough – everything a legitimate global sports event should be. Zillions of people all over were engaged or they were going ballistic. Staying up all night, bawling at the telly or into their bevvies or tinnies or teas – captured or enraptured.

Look the Australians were the best team and they won. The Black Caps were a revelation and they made the final. There was that inflamed heartland thing going on again, as the local gangs glared good-heartedly enough at each other then went at it. We could all buy in at the death – pick our second team and give it some verbals.

In the end – the chillingly appropriate, utterly predictable end – the Aussies were undeniable and (goddammit) magnificent. There was that revelatory sense that whilst reasserting themselves they’d broken through into somewhere new.

But how?

Hours later and earworm du jour is

Some things change/ some stay the same… (‘Hymn to her’, if I’m not mistaken?)

Meaning I’m with Chrissie Hynde. Whilst thinking cricket. (I know… you may need to either ‘go with the flow‘, here, or stretch back in your chair to the Eighties).

OK, prepared to indulge? Then get this. Chrissie’s American; she’s got that streetwise thing goin’ on. She’s a wit – somewhere between a wit and a guru. She’s surfing ahead of something, maybe, happy to be exposed – to lead. You would listen. Hynde would be wicked company – authoritative on life, you feel, as well as on her particular metier. Park that thought.

Some time ago I spent three hours in the company of Mike Young, the Chicago-born fielding consultant to the Australian cricket team. He was leading what tends to be called a ‘workshop’ for coaches at Glamorgan CC. In fact it was a chat in a classroom setting – that was the way it turned out. But it was superb.

Mike told us about his early days and the extraordinary but okaaay, viable leap he made from pro baseball, to coaching in Chicago, to coaching fielding… in Australia… in cricket. The story was in every sense fabulous despite the obvious crossovers between (mere) catching and throwing skills. The more Mike spoke the clearer it became that something about his manner as well as his knowledge made it figure entirely that he became central to the great and dominant Aussie cricket teams of the incomparable Warne/McGrath era.

Without him ever (I promise!) being boastful, we learned that McGrath may owe his longevity to Young in the sense that Mike sorted out his throwing arm and shoulder and that a Hussey or two felt deeply, deeply indebted to the baseball man. As time went on and Mike’s presence became ever-more integral to the cause, a series of world-beating teams pretty much insisted that Young was traveling with them as they blew the opposition away around the globe. In short the players loved him and wanted him on board because they rated him as a bloke and as a coach.

After an absence, Young has been back working with the Australian team. A team which has just stormed to another Cricket World Cup trophy – their fifth.

I am not here to make some ridiculous claim that Mike Young’s affability has turned Aussie cricket around and gifted them the World Cup; I don’t even know the current level of his involvement. But I am going to say this; Young is hearty, inspiring, funny and charismatic. He gets the necessary humour of this blokey-sporty thing. He understands how players feed off matie-ness as well as offering brilliant, convincing leadership in which they trust.

That phenomenon (I like this notion of team ‘humour’) strikes me as boomtasticallly relevant now. It’s the matrix; players being gathered, being receptive.

Almost always it takes personality to drive that; almost always the coaching staff are key.

Darren Lehmann evidently has this liberating confidence – as does Mike Young. So it figures to me that this Australian side has transformed in remarkably quick time from a side battered by England (of all people!) into an unbeatable, backslapping grin-monster. They are happy, they are playing without fear, they are (as I tend to say) outliving themselves. They have found that delicious and deliciously transient nirvana; or more accurately they have been suggested, prompted, freed towards it by the coach.

That, within the cosmic thunderclap of change, is the thing which stays the same. It may have more to do with reading humans than with reading the coaching manual, or reading the riot act.

Crofty.

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I was about 30 feet away as Dominic Cork, the slickish rather than truly urbane linkman thrust that furry mic into the poor fellah’s face. Crofty, looking a tad drawn after long hours in the field and no doubt more aware than anyone of the poignancy of the moment, drew in visibly and spoke. Not remotely as easily  as is his chirpy wont but, given he was immediately asked effectively to encapsulate a sporting life, he did okay. He then grabbed clumsily for his son’s outstretched hand for an inadequately rehearsed but final clamber up those dressing-room stairs. Tears, as they say, weren’t far away. Real ones, not High Definition jobs.

The small Cardiff crowd – in which I consider myself privileged to have been included – clapped with gusto in that way suggestive of building emotion. We felt entitled to offer up a kind of knowing but all the same deferential appreciation. I heard the words ‘wonderful, Crofty’ aimed like a kiss on the top of his lowered forehead.

All of us knew something quite special was passing. Let’s be clear, the 21 Tests, the 903 First Class/List A/20-20 matches played, the 1673 wickets taken really matter; they just don’t, in themselves, account for the love.

The home side by this stage had all but won the game (against Kent) barring a Glamorgan-scale debacle in their reply, which fortunately failed to materialise. The man himself had taken the final wicket and mostly, the September sun had obligingly produced. Robert Croft – with a one year contract at Glamorgan to do ambassadorial/corporate work and surely genuine possibilities for wider media work – will hardly be disappearing. But he will not, apparently, be bowling. So it felt – it feels – like a shame.

May his legacy (that word again!) persist; infectious, on the pleasing side of jaunty, like his approach to the crease. And on that irresistible nature, a small wager; that reminders to Rob to show some enthusiasm will remain unnecessary; whether working at the Swalec or beyond, in an office or net, the fellah will still bounce in.  He may even appeal.

Crofty I think of as the chopsy poet of off-spin – maybe the chopsy Taff poet – and I view this as complimentary in every detail. I hope he does.

Having attended a workshop he gave to us Regional Coaches and seen him deliver both those absurdly fluent, flighted or flattened right-armers together with informal masterclass-isms for the benefit of us lesser life-forms, I can make surprisingly valid comment upon the man. Spluttering before the cameras I might muster… “he’s a bloody good bloke”. Elsewhere, with time to re-grasp reflections more or less blurred by time or Felinfoel I might suggest an outstanding Welshman, full of that rich mixture of public house verbals and proper sporting sparkle befitting a Premier Grade Dragon. A real player, in fact.

So as not to patronise him entirely with stories of his chummily colourful past let’s reinforce this essential rider; Crofty has performed, with rare diligence and consistency and passion for his beloved Glamorgan. Look at the stats if you will. Consider the fact that he’s often opened the bowling in 20-20’s, for example – an invitation to get humbled for any off-spinner.  Or look elsewhere in the columns, the how many’s. You will find something pretty remarkable. The woolly, immeasurable truth however is surely that few can match either his quality as a slow bowler or his loyalty and commitment to a single cause; very few have matched that combination of gift and heart.

Slow bowlers need a certain guile to go with any spin they may have. Croft personified a further extra-curricular dimension; he was a personality on the pitch. He believed and expressed the belief that body language – the oohs and aahs and OWIZZEE’S as well as the physical whirlings – were key to the armoury.

Tellingly, during the spin workshop – in front of 40-odd coaches uniformly but perhaps unknown to him slightly awed to be in his presence – Croft seemed inconsistently served by words. But when he demonstrated some of this intensity, in alliance with a fluency bordering the bewitching he impacted most fully upon the room. You use that seam – at 45 degrees; you follow through; you engage with the batsman – you get in his head. Like this!

I have a clear memory of leaving with a smile on my face, surer than ever that this occasionally combative professional sportsman might reasonably have the words ‘artist at work’ daubed on the flip-chart at the mouth of his net. He has a quality perhaps best recorded by such graffiti. Plus I suspect he might like the ambiguity – the banter? – such a tribute might evoke.

When relaxed, Croft has that blokey ease found all over; when riled, he is allegedly capable of stubbornness or worse – perhaps especially if he feels the county, the team risks being undermined. But when bowling – when released into the flow of his natural state – Croft (if it doesn’t sound too absurd?) outlives himself. Meaning something to do with poetry occurs; meaning something bigger than Robert Croft occurs.

Whether I am daft or delusional or dynamically charged in this, I hope young spinners in Wales will get some sense of his boundlessly purposeful bound, his zealot’s wheeling. And… enjoy that.

Kids go searching.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

I’m no fan of Kevin Pietersen and never have been; I’ve never believed in him. I know plenty of folks think he’s a genius, a rare and special talent who’s simply been mismanaged but in accepting the bulk of that statement I reject him, utterly.

If the Steve Harmison story is true about KP flatly refusing to take throw-downs from senior England coaches then let that be my reason. If it’s not, let it be that I think his arrogance and his consistent failure to think of his mates and that team-thing marks him down as a… luxury item.

But hey guess what? Recently I’ve been ploughing through ECB Coaching Workshops and the thought struck me that KP – yes him with the ego – might have done something which may yet turn out to be profoundly positive. Maybe.

Between the Level 2 ECB Coaching Certificate and the new Performance strata there now lies a bunch of workshops. These are important in that they set out a good deal of the new ideology around coaching cricket in England and Wales. (Ideology? Oh YEAH, you better believe it.)

In the last eighteen months or so, following an epic lump of research, sports-scientific wotnots and cross-bi-lateral oojamiflips, the ECB has re-emerged from the swamp. Or should that be… the nets? There’s been a fascinating and genuinely radical shift in the thrust of coaching. Personally – and maybe I should be careful with what I say – I reckon you can feel the hand of the Sports Development Militias in it and you can certainly taste the political correctness of the era; neither of which is necessarily bad. But with generic views may come the occlusion of that which is unique to cricket.

The titles alone, of some of these workshops (and the fact that they are known as workshops, eh?) may tell you much of what you need to know. “Creating the Learning Climate for Children”. “Game-based Learning.” “Skill Development for Children”. Cutting through the inevitable (and inevitably transient) verbiage, there’s a powerful move towards ‘player-centred’ coaching, going way beyond tokenism towards the individual. This is big, ideologically-driven stuff aimed at making coaches work more about the player and less about the recall or display of their own cricket knowledge. I think some of this may have been prompted by KP, whose profile has been such that he could, conceivably, be a catalyst here.

Those last two paragraphs may have had too much cynicism lurking so let me immediately contradict. Or at least re-calibrate the tone. The changes are huge, or will feel that way to coaches brought through previous regimes – regimes which have themselves been rotated or cheese-grated through development over the years. But (genuinely) my experience of Cricket Wales/ECB Coach Education (and therefore my sense of the philosophical intent) has been both encouraging and challenging in a good way. Surprisingly perhaps, things feel quite dynamic back there. People seem to be alive to the need to transform; rapidly.

But back to KP. I’m guessing that opinions in the ECB hierarchy are about as divided when it comes to Pietersen as they are in the general population. In a private space 60% would describe him with a brisk four letter word – a recent former England skipper did exactly that, you may remember.

38% would say it doesn’t matter what we think of him or his methods – ‘e dun it on the pitch’. The remainder would splutter into their Pimms. What is interesting to me is that having seen/sat through these workshops, the voice of KP –in fact the noise that KP makes- about ‘not coaching talent out of kids’ booms out. Credit the ECB that he is the first face turned to the camera in a key video on skill development.

Predictably, Pietersen goes straight into his ‘Bell plays classically, I don’t: don’t go coaching kids there’s just the one way’ argument. Understandably. Justifiably. But it’s almost as if in their scramble to appease the twin-headed monster at shortish mid-off (Pietersen/the multi-sports-conversant, child-centred modernist and funder?) the ECB have changed everything. Perhaps, being broadsheet-reading, report-assimilating types they fear being called out for old fart-dom? Perhaps they are high on that elixir of the coaching industry age, branding – branding in the sense of renaming, re-infusing with sexy new jargon rather than psychotic (aaaaargh!!) market-driven branding.

This is certainly how the swing away from the previously central notion of (accepting the validity of) certain ‘Technical Models’ feels to many coaches who qualified pre-, say, 2012. Many are cynical. I am not, despite how this might sound. I view this stuff as a healthy challenge.

If Pietersen has bullied us into reviewing the very essence of coaching that is remarkable. That has happened. The talk is of ‘Core Principles’ now not ‘feet shoulder-width apart and blah-di-blah high elbow’. Skill is successful execution not necessarily a particular movement pattern. Players finding things and coaches asking questions are central. The essence of ECB coaching is bravely empowering… and that’s good.

Now because I don’t like the man I’m reluctant to give KP too much credit in this but the fact is too many coaches did have a very fixed idea of what skill looks like and they bored generations of twitching, net-bound youngsters with those ungenerous notions. They can’t get away with that now. The newer, younger coach on the block will either call them out or intervene, as I do, when somebody is saying too much/presenting 44 ideas not four to a group of nine year-olds.

So KP as crusader, then? Hardly. The man’s a tad more fixated on his image, his contracts and the most efficient route to the limelight for that. But he has stirred it, made his point and rendered this debate necessary. That’s a singular contribution.

It may be that the new, updated ECB risks alienating traditionalists and fails to address finer, technical points; I’ve heard it said that there are gaps in the essential knowledge, that ‘Core Principles’ are all very well but what, precisely do you as a coach fall back on when a particular skill proves beyond a child? Generic answers aren’t always viable.

I’m hoping the ECB have thought of this. But it may just be that they are choosing to let kids go searching.

 

@cricketmanwales is proud to work for @cricketwales. But these views are his only, right?