The coaching business

ROHIT BRIJNATH

IT'S a question that arrives mostly with defeat, a question posed to coaches of teams riven with dissent, unsure of their ambition. Which is why it is precisely the question to ask John Buchanan, coach of an Australian team that is redefining cricket's landscape.

How do you motivate your team?

For a thoughtful man, whose every answer is deliberated on, he is remarkably abrupt. "You don't," he says.

"If you had to they wouldn't be that good. If we had players not of that calibre, who had no desire to play for their country, then we'd be pushing uphill."

Buchanan is an interesting study, a portrait of cricket's changing times, a glimpse of the altered nature of coaching.

On his first day at work in 1999, he rattled even the relentlessly ambitious Steve Waugh by putting up a poster on the Australian dressing room wall that read, "Today is the first Test of our journey to the Invincibles - let's make the ride enjoyable and attainable." (The reference to the Invincibles being Don Bradman's legendary 1948 team).

So how far, I ask, have they gone on that journey?

Again he surprises, for by any measure his record-breaking team has travelled some distance. Still, he says, "(We've travelled only) a quarter way there."

He says if you ask his team some might say they've completed 50% of the journey, others even 100%. So why is he so unbending? "Because that's my role and (else) we could lapse into a feeling of comfortability."

There is an element of honesty to Buchanan that is staggering. There is no chest-beating in public, no false bravado, when indeed he has some license, considering what his team has achieved, to be self-indulgent.

So when I ask whether his one quarter (the distance his team has travelled to their destination) would have become one half if the Australians had beaten India at home, he does not dispute it completely. Then he goes further. He says the Australians were not so much overconfident but possibly unprepared for the Indians, that they didn't discuss enough. "We were fairly sure how they would bat and bowl, but I'm not sure we were totally prepared for a player (and he names Laxman and Harbhajan) to exert that sort of skill."

He is complimentary too about Ganguly, who while un-mannered (late for the toss, not attired appropriately), brought, he says, "something to the Indian side which we tended to undersell, like a steeliness."

Buchanan, who has never played Test cricket, is not your average coach. He bears a passing resemblance to Los Angeles Lakers' coach Phil Jackson, and like Jackson who quoted Sioux lore to his players, Buchanan is known to offer up quotations from ancient Chinese generals like warrior-philosopher Sun Tzu, who wrote The Art of War in the fifth century BC. If it will drive his side, he's willing to try it.

Of course, while some people may exaggerate his ability and see him as Rodins The Thinker come to life (some Indians see John Wright as a similar saviour), others take a diametrically opposite view believing the coaching business is all poppycock, that their roles are amplified and inflated.

Some months ago Ian Chappell illustrated this argument with three points: first he said why limit yourself to one source of knowledge (i.e. a singular national coach); secondly, he suggested coaches do different things (like being inventive during training) merely to justify their role to watching Board officials; and thirdly, he wondered if we were breeding young cricketers who ran to the coach with every minor problem thus unable to think for themselves.

I put this to Buchanan and initially he says, "Ian is completely right and that no doubt the best coach is yourself." Yet he adds that Chappell has to come to grips with the (new) role of the coach, that the former Australian coach thinks of coaching in a naive or archaic sense.

"The role I play," says Buchanan, "is to make the coach redundant. The players are there to think for themselves but not all have the skills and gifts and know how to do it. I give them guidance. Not everyone is blessed like Ian who could solve his own issues. (And anyway) the coach's role has been extended beyond physical and mental preparation, he is there to be a resource to his captain, to develop cricket in the country."

This gulf in perception over the coach's role finds some semblance of explanation in another, unconnected answer, that Buchanan gives.

In the beginning of the conversation, it is mentioned to him that Brazilian soccer coach Luis Felipe Scolari once said that in the 1960s football players would run the equivalent of six and a half kilometres during a match but these days it is 13 kilometres. So, Buchanan is asked, can he identify an equally significant change (there must be many, of course) in the way cricket is played.

Replied Buchanan: "One of the great learning environments (in cricket) was (the) post-game (discussion), when players would sit down and maybe have a drink in the dressing room and talk for 2-3 hours. It was one of the beauties of the game, and a learning experience for younger players and even older ones. It was better than watching videos."

But that, he says, has disappeared. "Players finish, they pack, they leave." It is partially the reason why, he explains, we now have coaches and videos and statistics and planning and tactics. In a sense it is cricket's modern-day substitute.

Much like India hopes from Sourav Ganguly, Buchanan identifies Steve Waugh as the principal driver of the Australian team. His own role, he says, "is to talk about constant improvement, to challenge the players, to ask them show me where and how you have improved, to give them ideas and confidence."

Ideas by themselves are not enough, they demand acceptance. For instance, Australia believes strongly in rotating players during one-dayers, shaping their team as Buchanan explains, in different ways to suit different strategies, different opposition, different conditions. But as he admits, it was difficult for players to come to grips with it. They would say, if I'm playing well why am I not picked?. The fact that this idea has now found unanimous approval points to impressive management.

(On the subject of rotation, Buchanan made a relevant point, suggesting that it should logically follow that countries with a greater population (i.e. India) should have a greater talent depth. That India defies that logic is not startling: after all, as Australia continues to oil its cricketing system, India spends more time hosting dinners for BCCI delegates to garner votes).

As New Zealand arrives, followed by South Africa, Buchanan's workload for the season is piling up.

He says he will study graphs of his teams performances in one-day cricket. He is constructing a superior feedback sheet for his players where they can also make comment on what he does (even now, when he hands in his feedback sheets, players come and disagree with him which is healthy). He has been speaking to Eddie Jones, Australia's national rugby league coach, on what his team does training-wise (what next, an Australian fast bowler tackling a stubborn batsman!). And he's got a strategic eye on the World Cup, 18 months way.

The Australian team is not the best cricket team ever but they have not finished yet; they continue to set fresh standards for excellence but their journey is still incomplete.

It is perhaps why John Buchanan must tell himself....

I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep.

His team, who write and recite poetry in team huddles to inspire each other, would tell him that's Robert Frost.