Kolkata: One must admire the honesty of Pat Cummins, Australia’s Test skipper, for speaking his mind about what kind of a coach they would look for as a replacement for Justin Langer on Wednesday. The dust has not quite settled down on the Cricket Australia’s manner of handling the Langer saga, which resulted in the former opener and a part of Steve Waugh’s all-conquering army stepping down earlier this week.
Cummins, who came out with flying colours after stepping in as a captain in the eleventh hour before the Ashes, cleared the air in a press conference when he said the team wanted a “more calm, more composed” new coach who would be more collaborative in nature. His plain-speaking clearly vindicated the buzz around the Australian dressing room for some time, where the senior players were reportedly unhappy with Langer’s so called volatile micro-management.
The incident certainly carries shades of the Anil Kumble-Virat Kohli stand-off in Indian cricket in 2017 which resulted in head coach Kumble - the most successful bowler for the country in both Tests and ODIs - had to step down even after a fairly decent run. If Cricket Australia is now being panned for their shoddy handling by Langer’s erstwhile teammates, the BCCI (then run by a Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators) fared no better as they had to give in to the demands of a stubborn captain Kohli.
It became quite a messy affair as a three-member of Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC), then comprising of Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman tried to convince Kohli to mend fences with Kumble but it failed to cut ice with him. The BCCI was literally left with no option but to reappoint Ravi Shastri, with whom Kohli’s chemistry is all too known - a partnership which came to an end after the T20 World Cup in the UAE last year.
Kumble, as his official statement reveals on that occasion, said that since the captain Kohli not comfortable with his ‘style’ and hence, he found it ‘untenable’ to continue at the helm of the team. A petulant Kohli, on the other hand, did not come with his side of the story and though their personal relationship has eased out over the years, the incident remains one of the most sordid sagas in Indian cricket after the Greg Chappell-Ganguly showdown.
The general perception about Kumble’s style was that while he may not have been ‘volatile’ in a way Langer was, the senior players found his emphasis on
planning and the weight of his personality rather overbearing.
This, however, brings back to the tricky question as to what kind of a coach really works in the context of modern cricket where they have to deal with successful, uber rich professionals? There is certainly no fixed template but the one takeaway from these recent experiences had been that the stature as a former cricketer is absolutely no guarantee in moulding a team into a successful unit. Just ponder this - the Indian team, rich on star value, which last won a ICC World Cup in 2011 had Gary Kirsten as a coach - the South African opener clearly preferring to take a backseat and allowing the elder statesmen of the team call the shots. On the other side of the fence, John Buchanan - more of a cricket theorist than anything else - had been in charge of Waugh’s men during their long winning streak.
In fact, it’s often said in zest that if you have Langer, Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting, Waugh, Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie or Shane Warne in a squad, any coach would guarantee success.
The bottomline, as it stands, is that today’s top-drawer cricket teams would rather prefer man managers if the coaches want a longer lease of life at the helm.
