When a coach or captain is fired (or pushed to resign, which is the same thing), one of two reasons dominate. Either the team has had poor results or the players are unhappy, whatever the results. England’s coach Chris Silverwood lost his job following a 0-4 result in the Ashes.
Ironically, the successful coach on the other side, Justin Langer, lost his job too — in his case largely because he lost the support of the senior players
In India, Virat Kohli, their most successful captain was pushed into resigning when he read the signs and decided they were not in his favour.
This tells us something about coaches, player power and the life-span of coaches and captains. Langer, who took over at a difficult time in Australian cricket following the sandpaper scandal in South Africa, managed to clean up some of the stains on the team reputation. He modified the team culture after the obsession with winning had pushed it over the edge.
Job done
More recently, his team won both the World T20 and the Ashes, so he could feel he had done his job.
Perhaps that is where the problem lay. Langer had done his job, and it was time for change. What pushed things to the point of resignation was the opinion of the senior players that he was a tough taskmaster and that he did not enjoy their confidence anymore. New skipper Pat Cummins concurred, and so it became a matter of priorities for the cricket board. The deciding body reckoned that Australian cricket needed Cummins more than it needed Langer, and that meant there could be only one conclusion to the drama.
Not unusual
This is not unusual. Some years ago the Indian cricket board decided that skipper Kohli was more valuable to it than coach Anil Kumble and threw in its lot with Kohli when the captain expressed his displeasure. Whatever the ethical issues involved, it boiled down to a practical one. The captain and coach cannot be at loggerheads. It is theoretically possible for a strong coach to push the captain out, but that happens less frequently. Then too the senior Indian players had felt that Kumble was a tough taskmaster. Ravi Shastri was recalled, did well, and continued till he reached the age-limit at which point Rahul Dravid, the current coach came into the picture.
Dravid can be a tough taskmaster too and can set the team’s agenda and settle its culture just as Langer — or Kumble in his brief spell — had done. His advantage is that India will have a new captain while most of the players passed through the junior ranks when he was the coach there.
Some captains and coaches work well together. This has more to do with man management than with cricketing expertise. The Greg Chappell-Sourav Ganguly partnership is an example of how quickly things can go wrong, despite a promising start. The captain led from the front, the coach from behind, and everybody else lined up behind one or the other.
In cricket, as in most professions, the coach or captain is chosen for specific skills. In different phases, sometimes these skills become irrelevant and other skills maybe required. When teams are at a low ebb, they need a rebuilder.
Once they have settled down, they need a consolidator. If a slide begins, they need someone who can turn things around quickly, and stand as a bulwark against erosion in team spirit and spiralling failures.
Some excellent rebuilders may not be sound consolidators while a captain who is the boy on the burning deck might lack the skills to put out the fire.
Sometimes captains and coaches are terrifically good at one of the three jobs, or two of them. Most companies — and cricket teams are often run like professional companies — are unemotional about a sacking here or a replacement there that they think will make the difference. Sometimes a change for the sake of a change works too.
Few CEOs or coaches resign of their own volition because they think that is best for their company or their team. The signs are clearer when seen from the outside. Not all teams go through the three phases requiring three different sets of skills to set them right again nor are the phases so clear-cut.
That is what makes change so difficult to accept for one group of supporters while appearing inevitable to another. As always, whether with top companies or cricket teams, there is only one measure of success: the results.
The coach-captain relationship is a crucial one, but not one that has been studied in any great detail. When things are going well, no one wants to rock the boat; when things begin to appear shaky one or the other has usually compromised.
