Coaching no use to the greats
In The Daily Telegraph , Derek Pringle supports Shane Warne’s recent comments and argues that a coach is not much use to great players.
Martin Williamson
25-Feb-2013
AFP
In The Daily Telegraph, Derek Pringle supports Shane Warne’s recent comments and argues that a coach is not much use to great players.
This winter, England will tour India and Australia with as many as five coaches, and that is not counting the physiotherapist, masseur, doctor, media managers and security advisers who will accompany them. When England toured Australia in 1982-83, neither team had a coach.
The old days might not have been the way to do things, but Pringle goes on to suggest we might gone too far the other way ...
What Warne is really saying is that great players don't need coaches, and he is right. Certainly the most gifted players of my acquaintance, Ian Botham, Vivian Richards and Brian Lara, were instinctive and possessed great flair. The only advice they listened to came from their inner voice. Coaching, by contrast, is about advice based on method and analysis, things anathema to pure talent.
It all comes under the umbrella of team preparation which some coaches, perhaps justifying their hefty salaries, have pushed to the limits of acceptability. While computer and video analysis are considered standard now, wacky ideas such as the use of earpieces between coach and captain (a Bob Woolmer idea subsequently banned by the International Cricket Council) and studying the Art of War by the ancient Chinese general, Sun Tzu (another Buchanan initiative), have invited derision and not just from the press.
Martin Williamson is executive editor of ESPNcricinfo and managing editor of ESPN Digital Media in Europe, the Middle East and Africa