One Coaching Size does not fit All

Franchise teams replace rather than fix 'faulty' players

    Prominent amongst his many attributes is Rob Walters’ ability to any glass as half-full rather than half empty. When preparations for major tournaments have been hampered by the unavailability of key players, he has praised their involvement in franchise tournaments rather than bemoaned it.

    “At least they are playing competitive cricket rather than sitting at home doing nothing,” has been a common refrain. Without wishing to dampen his enthusiasm, we shouldn’t ignore the glass half-empty side effects.

    Well paid franchise coaches, like most well-paid employees, feel an understandable need to justify their position by ‘doing’ something, or at least saying something to the players under their control.

   The more secure amongst them may tolerate their players seeking personal and technical advice from the coaches players have grown up with in their formative years, or their first professional coach, but the majority prefer their players to do what they deem is required for the team. In other words, to do “as they are told.”

    In days long gone the only ‘conflict’ players faced between coaching styles was limited to their first-class team and the national team, or between their club coach and their first-class coach. These days, in the franchise world, players can have as many as five or six coaches in a year, the majority of whom are under pressure to deliver immediate, short-term results.

    Some senior and seasoned cricketers develop the skill of listening and ‘filtering’ the advice they are given, ignoring that which they know doesn’t work for them – with an acquiescent nod of thanks. But many don’t, or can’t. The result can be a chaos of confusion and a failure to progress as a player.

    Dewald Brevis may be a case in point, perhaps Donovan Ferreira, too. There are many to chose from. Brevis is particularly susceptible to a flood of potentially conflicting styles because he has the rarest of special talents, a genius just waiting to be shaped into the finished, match-winning diamond. And what coach wouldn’t want to be credited with that, as well as winning matches for their team?

    Rapidly changing environments can be detrimental to form and confidence. Ferreira moved from the Hundred in England to the Proteas, from the Oval Invincibles to the Caribbean, from representing a team he had no natural affinity for to playing for his country. Australian Tom Moody was his celebrity coach in London, Rob Walter his coach in Trinidad.

    Brevis has had as many as eight different coaches in the last 18 months and at least four different job descriptions from opening the batting to number three, ‘building’ in the middle overs to being the designated ‘finisher’. His leg-spin bowling has, at times, been regarded as a frontline option to being disregarded entirely. His involvement in Proteas squads has been sporadic. It would require a personality of remarkable resolve and self-belief not to feel unsettled by it all. Under-19 World Cup star and mighty contract with the Mumbai Indians aged just 19 to…where? Where is his career heading?

    Two of the most prolific and successful mercenaries in franchise history, Kieron Pollard and Dwayne Bravo, adopted different approaches to their numerous coaches. The former declined all coaching – it was a condition of his contract - and the latter merely ignored them. But they were established greats of T20 cricket who could, and did, do what suited them best. It’s not an option for the majority travelling freelancers.

    Tristan Stubbs may well become a pioneer on the field in the years to come but he may already have become one off the field for young, ambitious South African cricketers. For any young cricketers, indeed. In Trinidad last week he revealed, unobtrusively, that he had withdrawn from the Caribbean Premier League this year and would henceforth be managing his career by limiting himself to Proteas fixtures, the IPL and the SA20.

    This will ‘limit’ his earning capacity to something like R20million per year (in a World Cup year), such are his contracts in the two franchise leagues. That’s all well and good but the vast majority of South African cricketers would happily accept a junior contract in Canada, Nepal or the Cayman Islands earning anything in dollars. It was hardly a difficult decision for a man who turned 24 two weeks ago and is earning that much.

    But Stubbs’ quiet, unassuming words apply to all cricketers: “You can’t just keep playing all the time, you need to rest.” He might have added ‘…playing for arbitrary teams who don’t really care about you and will drop you and cancel your contract as soon as you lose form and are no longer useful to them…’ but he’s far too polite for that.

    There has been an awful lot of talk in recent years about the need for players to ‘maximise their earning potential’ during careers which are inevitably short-lived. That’s true. And there is an equally strong argument, becoming stronger, that the best way to do that is by playing less, and better, for teams that mean something to you, and you to them.