Croft sets out on 'hairy audacious goal'

Three seasons have elapsed since Robert Croft's Glamorgan career finally rolled to a stop, 407 first-class matches and 23 years logged during his perpetual declaration of Welsh pride. There was even a farewell tale to provide sustenance through his retirement years when he took 7 for 107 in his last match in Cardiff to spirit Glamorgan to a seven-wicket win against Kent. The crankily competitive offspinner had finished on a high.

Croft disappeared into the dressing room for the final time, deservedly established as one of the most noteworthy Glamorgan players of all time, 1,175 first-class wickets to the good, all of them secured, one imagined, not just with technical skill, but as the result of a thousand bar room conversations about the game, a lot of sweat and toil and a few dollops of irascibility along the way.

Nobody believed he would be gone for long. It would be the Welsh equivalent of a raven leaving the Tower. A wave goodbye, a quick shower and he was reinvented as assistant coach. This February, at 45, the head coach's role duly followed.

That vacancy arose when Toby Radford departed by "mutual consent", a casualty of a promotion challenge that had lost its way - or, more accurately, his response to it. Ottis Gibson, England's bowling coach, had a gander at the job but did not apply and Alan Butcher came close, but it always felt like Croft's job to lose. "I never thought I'd do it," he insisted at Glamorgan's media day, so putting himself in a minority of one.

This feels like Croft's time, reason enough to brave the Cardiff chill and here what he had to say. There was a hint of rain in the air, enough to remind you of the joke from the Welsh comedian, Rhod Gilbert, that he never realised he could take his Kagoule off until he was eight years old; Glamorgan could be grateful that their season begins a week later than most. But Croft had a spring in his step as he spread the gospel to anyone who cared to listen about his beloved county or, as he often prefers to call them, "the national team of Wales".

Hugh Morris, as chief executive and director of cricket, has begun much of the strategic groundwork for Glamorgan's recovery. More resources have been fed into the academy over the past two years and already the results are beginning to show. Morris has also negotiated debts down from £16m to under £5m - and as part of the deal, whether unspoken or not, once can safely assume there will be expectations from Welsh politicians that talented Welsh players will prosper.

There are already reasons for optimism. A new crop of young Welsh cricketers is hinting at promise and Croft's role is to stoke the furnace. History gives Glamorgan the faith that they can succeed. Morris and Croft were team-mates when they won the Championship in 1997 - an achievement based on 10 homegrown players and the world-class fast-bowling of Waqar Younis.

Forget pre-season optimism. It will be a huge surprise if the coming generation kicks on so rapidly that Glamorgan wins the Division Two title. They were fourth last year and even to repeat that will be a challenge. The task is to express that Glamorgan has a future built around its own.

It is much harder now: rugby is always strong but football also punches its weight more than it used to. Where does it not?

"Rugby is king in Wales, but the growth of football around Cardiff and Swansea is also much more marked than when we won the Championship," Morris said. "We want to promote cricket, but we need to be keenly aware that many of the best ball players will be interested in football and rugby. How we identify and appeal to local talent is very important."

T20 is hugely important in making that connection. In Cardiff, it is easy to see the attraction of the introduction of a city-based T20 league, just as in the likes of Kent and Sussex it is easy to sense the potential destruction that it might case. T20 connects in Wales and existed in evening club cricket long before it became seen as the financial salvation of the global game. If city cricket won the day, Glamorgan would be one of the winners.

Morris is convinced that Croft is the correct choice. He called him "Robert", which sounded unusual, an attempt at professional distance perhaps, an awareness of the dangers of sounding too matey. "Robert has got a really good knowledge of the game. He has played for 23 years at the highest levels of the game. He understands the game really well and he did a bit of an apprenticeship as assistant coach which added to that understanding.

"Robert is always one of those who led from the front from a young age. He wanted to have the ball in his hand, he wanted to have the bat in his hand, he wanted to be competitive. He recognises that the players have to have a big say in how the players go about their business. He will empower them."

Morris still smiles about the ructions when as Glamorgan captain he dropped Croft, early in his career, from a Championship match at Swansea. "He was a passionate cricketer from the first time I met him, determined to succeed and we debated his right to be in the side for quite a long time," he said.

A brief stint as an England spin bowling coach last winter also allowed Croft to operate in a different environment. "I think he benefited greatly from spending a short period of time with England," Morris said. "He has a lot of skills and knowledge you want as a coach and he very much got the dressing room behind him.

"We are very conscious of the fact that we are the only professional cricket team in Wales and to have a Welsh identity in that team is really important. Identifying the next generation of Glamorgan and England stars is essential - we have to have a pathway for young Welsh players. The one caveat to that and it is a very important caveat is that they have to be good enough."

So who are these stars of tomorrow? Croft fulfilled his media duties by insisting that names would not be named, that everybody had a chance to progress and that they would identify themselves, but his pride in Glamorgan's own is not easily suppressed. Eventually, they were bound to spill from him and so they did.

"We have got lots of young Welsh talent coming through," he said. "The important thing is that it is good Welsh talent. We have got Aneurin Donald, we have got Andrew Salter, David Lloyd, Ruaidhri Smith - just to name a few.

"It is very dangerous to pick out individual names. But what we are hammering home is we want the players to concentrate on their strengths and take those strengths to an exceptional level. I want to see ambition in their eyes. It is not just about coming out and playing a game of cricket. I want to see more players from this club representing England, I want to see them raising more trophies."

"I guess it's a big, hairy audacious goal but I think it's one they can do."

Big, hairy audacious goal? It was a phrase worthy of exploration. It turned out - as some of you may know - to be a term coined by Jerry Porras and James Collins in their business self-help book Built to Last, the result of a six-year research project at Stanford University which examined the qualities of successful visionary companies.

It is a fair bet such goal-setting books were not on the reading list when Morris and Croft helped Glamorgan win the Championship 19 years ago.