Woolmer: the right man at the wrong time (28 March 1999)

28 March 1999

Woolmer: the right man at the wrong time

By Scyld Berry

BOB WOOLMER has to be rated the best there has been in the brief, post-Packer history of full-time coaches of national cricket teams. In five years he has calmly cajoled a team, which had been on a par with England, into being the best one-day side and the second-best Test side. He is the person best qualified to be David Lloyd's successor, the right man to be the next England coach. But it is the wrong time.

Woolmer should have been appointed in 1993 after he had proved his worth at Warwickshire. The Test and County Cricket Board, in their all too finite wisdom, chose Keith Fletcher and gave him a five-year contract. When he had to be sacked less than half-way through, those responsible for the appointment did not fork out from their own pockets to pay him off: so much for accountability.

As coach of England, Fletcher was the same as when he had been captain, cautious and introverted, the opposite of everything he had been at Essex. The job description of a national coach has been changing, from hands-on technical adviser to organiser of a network of specialist sub-coaches. But whatever the description, daily practice routines remain a core responsibility, and Fletcher laid a dead hand on them, making the England players stand and watch while each one dropped his ration of skiers, while the South Africans under Woolmer were stimulated and vigorous.

Woolmer has gone back to look at cricket afresh, not relying on the MCC coaching book that was put together in the 1950s. By thoughtful analysis and studious application he had turned himself from being a medium-pacer into a sufficiently good Colin Cowdrey replica to make three Test hundreds.

A feature of the wicketkeepers Woolmer has coached has been the area which Keith Piper and Mark Boucher have covered, especially down the leg side. Woolmer went to watch the best goalkeepers to work out how they leapt and dived. To make Trevor Penney and Jonty Rhodes not just the best cover-points around but wicket-takers through run-outs as well, he video-taped them diving and helped to reduce their number of movements before throwing in.

His methods have always been quiet suggestions, never barked instructions, the style of the only other contender for the title of best coach, Bobby Simpson. Simpson was hierarchical: do this and that, as I say. Woolmer has been new-age meritocratic, starting with admitting his own inadequacies. Both styles have worked. Woolmer's more so.

If not in 1993, he should have been appointed England coach in 1995, instead of making Ray Illingworth coach-cum-manager. Illingworth was absolutely right in one respect: he was given the job 10 years too late, by when the age-gap had been exaggerated into a gulf by his 'in-my-dayness'.

And if Woolmer is given the job now, it will be the best part of five years too late. It is primarily a question of desire, or shortage of it. Woolmer has been there and done it with South Africa. Why should he want to go back on the road and try to do it again with England? In addition to the lukewarm statements, the expanding midriff betrays a preference for a good life in the Cape and its vineyards, mixed with a little coaching, perhaps at Warwickshire again in the English summers. In his fifties he has earnt some rest.

The England team and set-up would also be very different from the South African. In 1994 South Africa wanted to make up for lost time, to become the best as quickly as they could. England's players don't mind if they improve but trying new things might jeopardise their place in the side: safer to keep doing what you do, and get that county benefit to set you up for life. England's batsmen average late 30s and never more than 40 as they have a comfort zone in which to hide.

Woolmer was given a free hand too, to work with his players all year round and take them to camps for preparation. In England there is no Dr Ali Bacher to make the national interest supreme over local loyalties. Even after concessions from the counties, England's coach has to work with one hand tied behind his back in summer.

There is no other overseas coach on the horizon so good that his excellence would make up for the fact that his heart is not in England. Graham Gooch therefore deserves the chance to fire the England team with the same zeal that they demonstrated in the Ashes series, though you had to look hard to detect it when they were bowled out on the first day in Perth and bowling in a heatwave on the first day in Adelaide.

And if Gooch can raise England's intensity level in the field on the Monday of the Test against New Zealand at an apathetic Old Trafford, he deserves the job on a longer-term basis (though not a five-year contract again). It would have been ideal if had he been a manager somewhere else first, at a county or overseas, to learn from other examples and his mistakes; but at least he has already shed the dourness of his later playing years.

Lloyd's achievement was organising the network of specialist support, even if analysing opponents remains a serious lacuna. Gooch's forte is the other part of the job, the technical direction in the nets, where heaven knows there is plenty to be done with the feet and hands of those who bat for England. Under Bob Cottam a promising stable of pace bowlers is developing. If there is no attacking spinner - the biggest single defect in England's cricket - it is one which no coach could cure in a hurry.

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