1. Michael Clarke says that the punishment came after a series of incidents, and not just one. Let’s assume he’s telling the truth — that is, let’s assume he didn’t rest four players (including his best pace bowler) because they didn’t complete a “mundane” assignment (more on that later). Let’s also realize that the issue involves more than silly paperwork. The culture of an organization — in this case, a cricket squad — is immensely important. (John Wright, India’s first successful foreign coach, once marveled at how junior Indian cricketers would have to bring tea to the seniors– a tradition that no doubt unleashed waves of resentment, entitlement, etc.) For a team like Australia, where most of the players haven’t played many Tests, this period marks a dangerous moment: the rookies don’t know the traditions or the rituals or the customs, and they could set Australia on a course very different from the one it’s been on for the past 15 years. Listen to what Clarke says:
“We can’t accept mediocrity here. This is the Australian cricket team. Maybe I am biased [but] there is a big difference between this team and other cricket teams. If you play for Australia there is a lot that comes with that and standards, discipline, culture that is all a big part of what we are talking about here.” [emphasis added]
Clarke sees the future, and it’s bleak. He probably knows that Australia will likely not dominate the way it did in the 1990s and 2000s, but there’s a still a lot of room between South Africa and Bangladesh. We can disagree about where culture comes from, or how best to enforce its norms. [The Indians tend to favor a fatherly foreign coach who leads by example (Kirsten apparently moved Indian cricketers to become fit because he was, as a 40-plus-year-old, more capable than they were) or by gentle coaxing. Not really sure what moves Australians.]
2. I find it a bit strange to read posts about how Australia’s management technique appears to be ripped straight from Office Space, a 1990s film that lampooned the tedious, bureaucratic and often meaningless rituals of American managerial culture. So some people didn’t file their paperwork before a deadline! Big deal! What if they were training all day? Yeah, except this is what modern athlete management looks like. It means that players have to file tons of paperwork to let coaches know their fitness levels, how much they need to train, and rest, etc. When we were all praising England’s player management, what did we think we were talking about? This is the “price of modern cricket,” as I wrote in 2011 — someone records and analyzes hundreds of hours of video footage, then tells bowlers what’s wrong with their action, and then the players train obsessively to correct it. Or players go on the field wearing instruments strapped to their arm to measure every single step they take. The reason I find the Indian approach to cricket exasperating is that it is largely unplanned, ad hoc, and driven by often competing (and fickle) impulses.
3. In 2010, I quoted from David Foster Wallace’s incredible profile of Michael Joyce, in which he examined the kind of intelligence that is needed to succeed as a modern athlete. Wallace’s conclusion — that you have to completely zone out as many intellectual distractions as possible — suggests modern athletes are, basically, a special kind of dumb. Now, in that post, I wondered whether the same could be said of cricketers, whom I like to think are a breed apart from their colleagues in soccer or rugby or swimming or even tennis. The sheer complexity of Test cricket and its length of time require both discipline and strategic nous.
Or does it? Tom Moody’s reaction to the sacking was basically, ‘Well, fast bowlers aren’t the best at writing reports.’ But Mickey Arthur presumably wasn’t asking for intellectual manuscripts; he wanted his cricketers to reflect and think about their game. It’s a very common exercise in coaching — “Tell me what you think you did wrong” — as it forces you to get out of habit and to see your flaws. Wasim Akram once said that he’d often be frustrated when batsmen-captains hoped to get him to bowl better by saying cliched stuff like, “Line and length, line and length.” Wasim would think, “But why am I not bowling line and length right now? Why am I failing?” So, this wasn’t really that ridiculous an assignment at all — if you want a bunch of players who can analyze their strengths and weaknesses and express them clearly enough, then this makes perfect sense to me.
