As Shane Warne has opined on many occasions in between talking about dirty rotten pizzas, the American Pie movies and whatever other topics might pass through his mind instead of the cricket he’s supposed to be commentating on, the only good coach is the one that takes the players to the ground.
Good wordplay areas from Warnie there, as he toys with our expectation that he’s talking about an individual who provides support, training and guidance for the team and then subverts it by revealing that he is, in fact, referring to the team bus.
But Shane Warne’s distaste for international cricket coaches is not founded solely on his desire to unleash recycled Ian Chappell zingers at us. No, over the years he’s developed his case against coaches using well-reasoned arguments built on solid evidence and irrefutable logic.
Ha ha ha! No, of course not. It’s just that he hates former coach John Buchanan. Nobody else can quite remember why, but it’s probably got something to do with the fact that Buchanan was mates with Steve Waugh, who, as you probably recall from I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, selfishly dropped an out-of-form Warne for a must-win Test that Australia then went on to win.
Also, Buchanan is clearly a total nerd. So there’s that too.
Warne did ease up on coaches slightly in his legendary ‘Warnifesto’ back in 2013, where he called for Darren Lehmann to be the Australian coach. But, sadly, the hope that Lehmann might be some kind of cool, Fonziesque coach faded when Boof started doing horrid things to Michael Clarke. Y’know, like suggesting maybe he shouldn’t play if he had a dud hamstring.
But other sports have shown that the national coach need not necessarily be just a target for the misguided bile of vendetta-driven former players.
After all, how would the Australian rugby league team have fared against the Kiwis the other night without coach Mal Meninga’s vast experience in defeating opposition teams whose names start with ‘New’?
Would the Socceroos get quite so many Google hits without sports journalists continually checking that they’re spelling coach Ange Postecoglou’s (did I get it right? Let me just check that…) name correctly?
And when AFL’s finest unite in the national team to take on other countries at Australian Rules football, who is more important than the theoretical coach of this imaginary team? Nobody, that’s who.
International cricket coaches deserve to be treated with just as much respect as their football coded counterparts, especially given that a couple of them have been in the news this week.
Former Australian coach Mickey Arthur was the first to make headlines when he was announced as the new coach of Pakistan. Arthur is perhaps best remembered these days for his part in the HomeworkGate scandal during Australia’s tour of India in 2013 when Shane Watson, James Pattinson, Mitchell Johnson and Usman Khawaja were infamously suspended from the Third Test for failing to complete their pre-Test homework.
Hopefully Arthur’s learnt something from this. Namely, that you shouldn’t expect players earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to perform simple tasks that you request of them.
Luckily, nobody in Pakistan is on anything like that kind of money so he should be fine.
And, even if he isn’t, then that lack of fineness will presumably lead to at least half a dozen manifestos from former Pakistan champions and how much fun will that be for cricket fans? An Akramifesto? A Miandadifesto? Imranifesto? Inzamamifesto? The opportunities are endlessly entertaining.
But not, apparently, as entertaining as watching your team lose the Ashes in a whitewash. Because Andy Flower was also in the news during the week, discussing England’s Ashes tour of 2013-14, an experience he described as ‘fascinating’.
I must say, I totally love the idea that Flower spent the entire tour sitting in the dressing room, fingers steepled in front of his chin, eyes never wavering from the action, muttering ‘fascinating’ to himself over and over as the England team imploded around him.
“What’s that, Alastair? You all hate KP? Fascinating, fascinating.”
“None of you have any idea how to play Mitch Johnson? How utterly compelling.”
“Another Test lost in three days? Intriguing.”
“Well, well, well. A 5-0 Ashes defeat that will inevitably lead to me being sacked? Gripping stuff.”
Now, I ask you, could a bus ever be so fascinated watching its team lose the Ashes? Oh, sure. Maybe one of those new-fangled Google smart buses. After all, who knows what those futuristic marvels will be capable of?
But until such artificially intelligent vehicles are commonplace in world cricket, only a human coach will be able to provide this kind of comedy material. And that’s why those coaches deserve our respect.
Sorry, Warnie. Feel more than completely free to commence a petty vendetta against me.
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