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Why is the coach always the scapegoat?

(AP Photo/Saurabh Das)
Roar Rookie
23rd March, 2018
6

For me, blame is one of the great peculiarities of modern sport.

While players are chock full of media-trained platitudes, it is instead left to the rabid journalists and dumbfounded fans to use any means possible to heap scorn on their respective teams.

This is exactly what is happening following England’s debacle in the present day/night Test match against New Zealand in Auckland. For those of you cricket fans who’ve been hiding under a rock for the last 24 hours, the English Test side (now returned to ‘full strength’ with the addition of Ben Stokes) were completely embarrassed by the New Zealand seamers Trent Boult and Tim Southee.

These Kiwis are a far cry from the quality of the Australian attack that the English were skittled by in the recent Ashes series, and yet, at 9/28, England were looking down the barrel of one of the worst ever Test batting performances.

It was only an unbeaten cameo from seamer Craig Overton at Number 9 that saw the English team collectively raise their bat for a half century, before the innings fizzling out with the score at 58.

Full disclosure: as an Australian this has given me no end of joy. It also makes me wonder whether England were either overachieving during the Ashes by consistently reaching three figures in their batting innings, or whether Trent Boult is the new Wasim Akram.

New Zealand cricketer Trent Boult

Trent Boult (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Okay, now the gloating is out of my system, I can’t help but sympathise with one of the people involved in this English catastrophe. And it just happens to be Australian coach Trevor Bayliss. The English papers following the collapse have left the blame solely at his feet, none more outspoken than Nasser Hussain’s piece in the Daily Mail, in which he outlines Bayliss as the sole culpable party for the poor Test cricket team that England currently is.

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Yes, there were some paragraphs going around the traps mentioning that it was actually the players involved, and not Bayliss, who were responsible for this calamity, but they were few and far between.

Instead, it has been Bayliss copping the brunt of the criticism, and there are only likely to be increasing calls for his sacking/resignation after a 4-0 loss in the Ashes series. I recall there also being recent outrage in the English press that their Test team also left for Australia without a dedicated bowling coach.

The hide of them not to further micro-manage these professional cricketers and add another member to the swollen ranks of a support staff that already numbered 13! This lack of a bowling coach was given a large amount of blame for the English attack’s ineffectiveness during the Ashes, rather than accepting that they were spearheaded by an ageing Jimmy Anderson whose skills are not conducive to Australian conditions and an ineffective and overrated Stuart Broad.

England bowler Stuart Broad during a bowling spell on Day 4 of the First Test match between Australia and England at the Gabba in Brisbane, Sunday, November 26, 2017.

Stuart Broad looks frustrated (AAP Image/Dave Hunt)

Although often portrayed as masterminds behind team success when things are going well, coaches in modern sport are often the first kicked out the door when the going gets tough.

However the players are too often let off the hook during the bad runs, with selectors/coaches/national boards typically showing faith in underperforming or outclassed players.

Inevitably, should Bayliss be sacked or further tweaks made to the coaching staff, the England team will still line up with Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad when they next play in England, and an Alastair Cook who is well and truly past his prime at the top of the order.

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England's Moeen Ali, left, talks to coach Trevor Bayliss during a practice session a day ahead of their final match of the ICC World Twenty20 2016 cricket against West Indies, in Kolkata, India, Saturday, April 2, 2016.

.” (AP Photo/Saurabh Das)

At the same time, the actual power a coach in English cricket has must be limited. Other than the day-to-day running of practices and acting as a sounding board for players during these, team selection is often done by a separate selection committee from a pool of “players of promise” pre-ordained by the Andrew Strausses of this world.

While the coach may have some influence in selecting the team that he wants, this is far from the complete moulding of a team in a coach’s image that can be seen in European club football. Caught in a position effectively of middle management, the coach is too often the easiest and most visible one to dispose of, and keeps all parties (boards, players, fans, journalists) happy.

In Bayliss’ case, he has been frequently blamed for the lack of progress of the English Test team compared to the ODI team that he also coaches. It is worth noting that the ODI team has removed some of the dead wood and is invigorated by youth and exuberance, potentially causing the renaissance of English ODI cricket.

Former Australian Test captain Ian Chappell is often most critical of the role of coaching in top level cricket. His argument is a sound one; the players picked for the national sides with these top nations are professional sportsmen who have made it to the top of their sport, and upon reaching the national team become micromanaged by a number of coaches.

It is likely that over-coaching has done more harm than good for many top-level cricketers particularly, where changes in a batsman’s technique have been trialled at Test or international level despite a player making the team through weight of runs with an existing technique. As such, Chappell argues that the most a coach really can do for the players is keep them on track, and shouldn’t actively interfere with their existing skills and techniques unless something is drastically warranted.

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I suppose my viewpoint on the place of coaches in the sport is somewhat middle of the road. I understand the perspective of Ian Chappell, but also understand that a coach does have a certain role to play in moulding and managing the overall personality of a team involved.

If you’re looking at coaches at the other end of the spectrum, someone like John Buchanan was very important for the all-conquering Australian side of the early 2000s, as he pushed the players to think about the game and their roles laterally rather than in the terms of runs and wickets.

But using a coach as a scapegoat for poor performances too often papers over the cracks in a team that sometimes seems doomed to fail unless there are more drastic changes in playing personnel made. After a poor run this English side appears at one such crossroads, and the gravity of this failure against New Zealand already warrants more than the head of Trevor Bayliss.

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