England expecting to function better with new Pack drill (13 Jan 1998)

13 January 1998

England expecting to function better with new Pack drill

Christopher Martin-Jenkins

SIMON Who? Of all the new appointments made by the England Cricket Board in their first year in business the choice of someone unknown to the game to be the managing director of all representative England cricketers, from 17-year-old schoolboys to Michael Atherton, was certainly the oddest, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

By the long traditions of English cricket, the job - if such a new job was really required in the first place - should have gone to a safe pair of cricketing hands; someone everyone in the game knew and respected.

When he made his first appearance before county delegates before Christmas, it was clear that the ignorance about Simon Pack and what he was doing at Lord's was almost total. The same goes for cricket followers to date, although they might have registered that someone who had something to do with NATO now has something to do with the England team instead.

A year from now those who play for England should be very much more aware of what Simon Pack, CB CBE FIMgt, is about. If not, it would be surprising, because this tall, smart, softly-spoken 53-year-old of military bearing and easy charm is a formidable fellow, a major general who has only recently moved on from commanding British Forces in Gibraltar.

As such he was NATO's commander in the western Mediterranean, a former commander of the 45 Commando Royal Marines, director of overseas commitments at the Ministry of Defence and ADC to the Queen. Here was a formidable man, appointed to a job which, until Lord MacLaurin arrived to appraise the game afresh, no one involved in cricket had even considered necessary.

Broadly speaking, Pack, the new international teams director, has executive responsibility for the overall direction, organisation and administration of England, England A and any of the national age-group teams.

He plans, organises, and oversees all the non cricket-specific activities of players, coaches and supporting staff: physios, scorers, psychologists, doctors, and anyone else involved in what this model of a modern major general likes to call 'Team England'.

Having in his busy military life had no contact with cricket since his schooldays at Hurstpierpoint in Sussex, except as a spectator in the Warner Stand at Lord's and a player in two or three matches a year, he came to his desk at Lord's unsullied by the game's politics and its hitherto rather hidebound administration.

"I do think the politics of cricket are unnecessarily complex," he says bluntly. "But I am untouched by anyone's prejudices and perhaps able to see with more clarity evident inconsistencies or anomalies, which people on the inside have come to accept."

Without blaming the current England physiotherapist, Wayne Morton - praising him, indeed, for the way in which he masterminded the successful get-together of all England's winter teams in Lanzarote last autumn - he gives as one example the need to take a fresh approach.

The physio has assumed an importance beyond his station in England teams since the 1970s, when Bernard Thomas - competent and sympathetic character as he was - would have taken over the management given half a chance.

In the recent England set-up Morton would consider himself entitled to take decisions independently of the official England doctor, Philip Bell, or the fitness adviser, Dean Riddle. In future the international teams director will see that each man has a clear idea of where his responsibilities begin and end.

"Until now," observed Pack, with absolute accuracy, "the whole thing has floated rather vaguely. I'm trying to draw it all together to ensure that England teams have a united sense of direction."

If he succeeds, he may well make the difference between stumbling towards the future in the way English cricket always has in the past - sometimes getting it right, more often wrong - and striding towards it with a proper plan. This is exactly what the chairman of the Board, Lord MacLaurin, has made it his business to achieve.

MacLaurin wanted his chief executive, Tim Lamb, to have the time to take a more strategic role, rather than becoming bogged down by administrative detail. He saw two other roles for an international teams director.

The first was to bring some coherence to the system from the viewpoint of the players: giving them an idea of what is expected of them on and off the field, supporting them as needed and disciplining them when necessary.

The other was to give the image of English cricket the sort of polish which any Royal Marine would understand. There will be individuals and characters representing England in future if Simon Pack has his way, because he knows he is overseeing the contracts and conduct of professional sportsmen, not of schoolboys or soldiers.

He has already made one mistake along the way. The tour to Zimbabwe last winter, more or less a flop both as a cricketing campaign and a public relations exercise, persuaded him that the team to the West Indies should be given some pre-conditioning on the customs and culture of the Caribbean.

The talk, delivered at Old Trafford, was pitched badly and the result was an embarrassing failure. A similar briefing for the A team on Kenya and Sri Lanka found a younger and much more willing audience. Pack has not been disillusioned about the value of seminars generally. "I want to introduce them from under-19 level upwards so that players understand their responsibility to the media, to themselves and the game.

"The sooner you can capture their hearts the better. They have to understand that there's more to being an England cricketer than scoring runs or taking wickets. They have an obligation to young people, to sponsors and the wider world."

In return for a more responsible approach, and to give them every chance of representing England with the same profound commitment as the Australians, Pack believes, like his chairman, that sooner or later England players are going to have to be centrally contracted.

He said: "This is a personal view, and I recognise that there are lots of practical differences, but if we really are in the game of winning and of giving ourselves the optimum chance by removing all obstacles to success, central employment is the way. I'm optimistic that detailed discussion with the counties will result in a system which works for everyone."

It will not happen this year, the busiest undertaken by an England side, who face 16 Tests in the next 13 months, not to mention one-day games. Each player will have his contract for each phase personally tailored and explained. He will be given a job description and a detailed programme, showing not just fixtures but the likely dates for rest or preparation.

Pack will probably succeed or fail according to how successfully he relates to the players. He went to Lanzarote - "hugely successful in building up teamwork" - and spent as much time as he could with the cricketers, marvelling at the way in which characters as diverse as Matthew Fleming, Phil Tufnell and Graham Thorpe became part of the "wonderful feeling of team spirit".

If anyone has a gripe about conditions on these and future tours, the ITD sees it as his role to intervene. Equally, he will have his say if anyone lets the side down.

The major general might soon look back on his command of Gibraltar as a relative bed of roses.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)