Bengaluru: As charming and ebullient as the great Shane Warne was, his tendency to switch to the other end of the spectrum always posed a problem to those looking to get him to work within a system.
John Buchanan walked into the Australian team as a coach without having played a single Test match in his life in 1999. He was the first of the technocrat cricket coaches.
Warne, by then, had worn the Baggy Green for close to seven years and was already at the peak of his powers. Besides being the rebel the team relied on, Warne, the savant, saw no sense in listening to someone who dabbled in data and analysis.
As their ideological differences unfurled, Warne repeatedly dismissed Buchanan's role in Australia winning as much - a hat-trick of 50-over World Cups included - as they did in that period.
Buchanan hardly whispered a riposte then, but now, all these years later, he admitted to DH that he had to allow Warne’s ego some room to swell to get the best out of him.
Excerpts:
How did you tackle a team with such stalwarts and their egos?
I always felt that players should have strong egos because what that means is that every player knows what they need to do for themselves during the game. That’s pretty important once a player walks out onto the field because they’re the ones who have to make the decisions, they’re the ones who have to execute their skills. The better a player understands their game, the better they are at being their own coach and so yeah, having an ego is an integral part of this process. The coach’s role is to understand that and allow everyone to express their ego to a degree and in a healthy way. If done right, they will start coaching each other on the field. It’s not just the coach coaching the team at this point, but it’s the team coaching the team.
Speaking of egos, how was your relationship with Warne?
Shane was one of the game's greatest and possibly the greatest spinner of all time. He did things on the cricket field but I don’t think he appreciated how good he was. We (he and I) come from very different backgrounds. He was very old school and so, in his head, the coach is firstly given the credibility if they have the Baggy Green. I didn’t have that. That was already a bit of a problem for him. According to him, the coach was there just to make sure every player got what they needed. Naturally, we collided in ideology.
Warne was just about the most intelligent cricketer the sport has ever seen and his abilities as a tactician were beyond brilliant, and that’s why I say, I don’t think he understood how good he was.
(Glenn) McGrath was similar because they were able to compartmentalise their roles in and around the cricket field naturally. The second they stepped onto the field, they knew exactly what they needed to do, against whom and when, but they also remained in the present all along. The others couldn’t do that. They thought that was normal, but obviously, it was not. Warne had this skill: when he didn’t know a player, a situation or a circumstance, he would then experiment in the game and work it out, most of the time. That’s one of the only cricketers I have seen do that.
What was the grating factor between the two of you then?
The thing with Warne was that he thought my views on the game were too complex because I got into data and analysis and so on. He didn’t realise that he had his own computer (pointing to his head) and while it seemed simple to him, it wasn’t. Apart from McGrath, nobody else was in this league. My job then was to keep challenging him and push him to get better and better. We bounced off each other a number of times. I certainly respected him as a cricketer. I think begrudgingly, he would respect some of the things I had to say.
How did his passing affect you?
It was certainly a shock. Losing two people in a quick span was hard. Losing Symmo (Andrew Symonds) was especially hard because I was closer to him. Very heartbroken. There’s a real sense of loss because when you travel with the team and spend so much time with these cricketers, you tend to create a quasi-family so a loss like this hits hard. You see all sides of people. There are so many pictures and memories of Warne and Symonds which are a part of my life. I am a part of theirs too. It’s like losing a family member. I don’t think about either of them always, but when a question like this comes up, you start getting all those images back. It takes you back to those teams.
Is the game moving in the right direction?
There are a lot of franchise-based leagues around the world, and I guess that helps popularise the game in new markets. There’s an upside to that. The downside is that people are prioritising franchise cricket over their country, domestic cricket. That begins to dilute the domestic game which is unhealthy for the game. Franchise cricket offers more opportunities for people, but the ICC needs to find a middle ground. The ICC has to make some good decisions on how to retain the ethos of Test cricket and promote T20s at the same time.
What do you think the ICC do?
One of the things that I noticed, and it was refreshing, was the women’s series between England and Australia - the Ashes. There were four or five T20s, three ODIs, and one Test. Each format had its own charm and all of those results contributed to the end result of the Ashes. They condensed the whole thing to a short period of time. I think men’s cricket might want to consider it too.
What’s your take on ODIs?
I think ODIs are very important for cricket. It’s very difficult to transfer, and translate skills from T10 to T20 and jump directly to Tests. For example, a bowler bowls 10 balls in a T10, and bowls 24 balls in a T20. You then want him to bowl 20-plus overs per innings in Tests? There are also field changes. There are a lot of tactical differences between the formats so ODIs become an intermediary. This is the transition, going from short to long. In ODIs you begin to field more, you begin to bowl and bat more. You learn different things. The same is true for when you want to transition from Tests to shorter formats. The ODIs are a great middle ground.
How do you think you would have fared as a coach during these times?
The way franchises are operating now, you see that if you sign up for one team, say in the Indian Premier League, you have the same coach handling their other teams too. Typically, IPL owners have other teams in other leagues and want to maintain the same culture so keep these coaches across the board. It won’t be too long before the franchise tells the coach, or players in time to come, to contract them to play for all of their teams in the future. When you’re caught in that space, you won’t have the time to coach the national team. Your ability to coach nationally or domestically will be significantly reduced. Franchises will eventually tell you that you can go partake in national duty but you can’t coach for the franchise under those circumstances.