The Cricket Statistician No 195

32 Thoughts on Cricket Coaches by Douglas Roxburgh T he perceptions of what cricket coaches do and achieve are not always favourable. In his 1997 book A Lot of Hard Yakka [on the life of a county cricketer] Simon Hughes states [at p.270] that “..a full-time coach… travels everywhere with the first team but apart from a distant glance at the nets, supervision of fielding practice and organising the teatime sandwiches, many are little more than administrators .” Whether or not this harsh judgement is now, or was even then, a true representation of what a county coach does, it certainly neglects the influence of any remarks made to the players in the course of those activities, though, according to Hughes [ ibid ], few such remarks were ever made. In a talk to The Northern Cricket Society in the early 1980s at The Gryphon Hotel in Leeds, Ted Lester, the former Yorkshire batsman and by then the County’s scorer, was, however, adamant that what was required of the coach at that level was not detailed technical analysis but help and advice. The implication was that to the perceptive player the things which the coach said by the way could be of significant value. This is not to say that technical analysis has had no place in the coach’s armoury. As early as 1845 Nicholas Felix published his Felix on The Bat: A Scientific Inquiry Into The Use Of The Cricket Bat following his creation of the Catapulta, an early form of bowling machine, in 1837. In his 1962 memoir on Nicholas Felix Gerald Brodribb says [at p.19] that JC Traill relates how the catapulta machine was employed “because the same balls could be given over and over again” and Felix’s theory was “that there was one way and one way only in which the same ball should be played”, very much the function of a bowling machine today. Group coaching has a related objective. In The MCC Cricket Coaching Book published in 1952, and at p.3 therein described as “carrying the authority of the MCC”, explains that this method of coaching can “cover all who want to play the game” regardless of ability. Arguably coaches have, however, had most success when they have acknowledge both the innate ability of the player and that player’s reasonable aspirations. In Through the Remembered Gate Stephen Chalke, by then 45 years old, explains (at p.11) his relationship with his coach, the former Somerset player, Ken Biddulph. It did not matter to Biddulph that I had only limited ability.” I understand what you want, he told me. If I can get you a few more runs, a few more wickets, keep you enjoying the game for a few more years, you’ll be happy won’t you?” And by all accounts this was what he did. With due respect to Stephen, the same criteria for judging a coach can be applied to their work further up the ability scale. In his biography of Basil D’Oliveira, Time to Declare, Patrick Murphy states [p.14] that on advice from Eric Price, a former county professional, Basil started to wait for the ball to come to him and work it away off the back foot until the wickets got harder in the better weather. This is essentially the approach which Garfield Sobers also adopted, though the presentation of it in his book, My Autobiography (Chapter 15 On Batting) implies that it was a technique developed from his own observation. In that book he states (p.228) that when he first moved to England he did not have the necessary