Lives in Cricket No 12 - Ric Charlesworth

If you had to have 100 players playing international cricket, we’d struggle. But you only have eleven in a team, so we have enough talent to produce an outstanding team. We’ve lost some very good Test players in the last couple of years and that hurts you in the short term but there’s some very good talent who will eventually be competing for New Zealand. Interviewed in 2009, Charlesworth made it clear that, while he had the highest expectations of the work ethics of any athlete under his supervision he wasn’t fanatically inflexible. The New Zealand batsman Jesse Ryder was a ‘gifted player’ who clearly fell far short of Charlesworth standards of fitness. ‘He’s massive! But I thought we should play him, get him in the system and we could manage him. If Jesse was fitter he mightn’t get tired after making 50,’ he said, while conceding Ryder had now belied that judgment by scoring a Test double-century. Certainly, for all his diagnosis of continuing problems, his departure was the occasion for praise rather than recriminations from his New Zealand employers. NZC chief executive Justin Vaughan said he would be greatly missed. However, I know that most of us appreciate that Ric is a real ‘change agent’ and that his time with the organisation would always be limited. I am certain that many of Ric’s changes will be long-lasting both from a structural aspect but also, and more importantly, from a cultural perspective. He had impressed upon the organisation that ‘we must aspire to be truly world-class in all that we do. We cannot attempt to consistently win on the international stage without the highest standards and frameworks underpinning our premier teams.’ The goodwill of the New Zealand authorities was demonstrated by words, not to the press, but to those who seemed likely to be his next employers, the England and Wales Cricket Board [ECB]. A recommendation – from Martin Snedden, Ric assumed – led to an approach from David Collier, chief executive of the ECB to take on the high performance director’s role for English cricket. Although nothing was said specifically about their similar backgrounds, Ric agreed it could have been significant that Collier was a former hockey umpire who would be much more aware than most people in England of the Charlesworth sporting resumé. The job would give him considerably more money than New Zealand could offer and many additional benefits: annual ‘return airfares to Australia, 2002-2009 81