Lives in Cricket No 12 - Ric Charlesworth

Charlesworth knew from his own tolerance of the even fatter Jesse Ryder in New Zealand that coaches sometimes had to compromise their own exacting standards. And he also knew that Australian coaches active on the Indian sub-continent and in Sri Lanka faced greater difficulties than he had experienced in New Zealand. His experiences and observations in India led on, from comments about the difficulties Greg Chappell had experienced with the Indian Test team, to wider coaching issues. He believed ‘the players had a fair bit of say’ in Geoff Lawson’s recent abrupt sacking by Pakistan: their priority would have been ‘who’s going to be the most bland [appointment]?’ Although it was also relevant that Lawson had no experience as a coach and none of the influence on the wider cricketing culture that Ric himself had enjoyed in New Zealand, trends at the highest levels of contemporary cricket presented difficulties to any coach. One of his own dilemmas had been that he didn’t think New Zealand’s top players prepared well enough. But ‘considering all the demands on players’ it was hard to expect more of them: all ‘the money involved’ ruled out the obvious remedy of having a bigger squad. The problem was not simply a lack of resources. The workloads inflicted by modern international schedules meant that players should be rested ‘like pitchers in baseball’. But if players are to be paid for actual games played they are reluctant ‘to give someone else a go in their squad’. Such attitudes were at work not only in New Zealand but in all international squads, including Australia’s. Before the 2006/07 Ashes series he had worried that Australia ‘started to cut corners’. Opening batsman and fellow West Australian, Justin Langer, ‘miraculously’ recovered from a back injury to play in the Melbourne Test. ‘He got a couple of twenties, but clearly wasn’t fit and didn’t play for Western Australia for eight weeks after that.’ Asked whether somebody should have overruled him and prevented him from playing in the Test, Ric responded that ‘there was no rigour about that – it was one of the things that started to happen in that group. Buchanan would probably admit that there was a range of things that diluted their rigour.’ Was Buchanan undermined on such issues? ‘That was always happening … standards had started to slip. They got back on track for The Ashes but things started to slide again before the 2006/07 World Cup.’ Epilogue 95