"You care too much" - Coaching "Bazball" style

[sussexpob]

A few days ago I was on the train returning home from a meeting scrolling social media, when I stumbled upon a short video advert of Rob Key talking on Stuart Broad and Jos Buttler's podcast. The interview was produced pre-Ashes, but after seeing the 30 second soundbites from Key I hadn't previously seen, my interest was piqued enough to find the full video on Youtube and watch the interview in full. Entitled "Key's Ashes Masterplan", during the 1 hour of Key's performance he goes into some details about his own cricketing philosophy, and how in actuality it works between the various management roles and systems.

The first of these discussed is how to pick players. Key explains the first stage is using data analytics to narrow down the pack based on metrics like pace, how much they move the ball etc. From this, short highlight reel videos (Key said him and Baz think only 40 seconds is enough to judge a player) are produced showing players crushing balls to the boundary or bowling snorters. The Lions team is seemingly picked on these videos alone, and there is a stated policy not to mention or show any problems or technical issues players have when making these assessments. When putting all these players together in the Lions, those who then look good are elevated.

A good example of this is Shoaib Bashir, who made it to the Lions team purely on the basis of a short video posted by Somerset on Twitter that Ben Stokes saw and shared on Whatsapp with the others. Reports differ on the exact length of the video (some say it was Shoaib's first over in full, some say two balls from that over), but Bashir apparently came on and bowled a couple of good balls to Cook, and on that basis he ended up in Abu Dhabi with the Lions, and from there directly to England National team. For context, this magic first over in cricket that warranted instant International selection was part of an effort where Bashir went for 1/185 in the game, taking only the wicket of the Essex number 10, and the batsman he apparently dominated went on to score 128. England seen generational talent, the scorecard shows he had one of the worst FC debuts ever.

It seems to me total folly to pick players based on 40 seconds of good bowling, and ignoring the fact that for 2 days they got flogged around, but Key goes on to explain that the system doubles down on this as it progresses. He explains that things like technical issues are not the concern of the team management or coaching staff, what they want to see is what the players can do from the highlight reel, if they do the highlight reel sexy stuff then it doesn't matter how bad they are at other things. To paraphrase the point, he basically says England find players with special characteristics or abilities, encourage them to stick to the things they do well, and have no interest in improving or acknowledging where they dont. Key states openly that technique is not something they work with players on.

In trying to explain the methodology, Key seems to uncover his own fundamental misunderstandings about developing players. He explains that technique is not important in comparison to just playing the game on intuition and street smarts, and argues that great players just know how to play the game and how to win the individual battles. He seems to assume that this is something natural, or that you embed in players by preparing them through plans, and that focusing on the nitty gritty of "backlifts" has no value. He then uses an example of Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad as people who just knew where to put the ball, knew how to out think batsman. They didn't need to know where their front arm was going to do that.

It's a strange example to use. If there is anyone I can think of in recent cricketing history that goes fundamentally against this argument, its Jimmy Anderson. He grew up as that 40 second highlight reel bowler, 90 mph reverse swing and knocking over stumps. All sexy stuff, but rendered completely irrelevant by the fact to bowl like that his head would rip to the side, his control was terrible, he overpitched or sprayed it around. It was only when Anderson completely adapted his run up, became more controlled and rhymical, dropped pace... only then did he find accuracy, and only then could he use all the tools in his box to out-think or work over batsman. The system Key has created would pick the 2003 Anderson, but has no interests in turning him to the 2013 version. It also seems comical to suggest that players just inherently have these skills. Do you think someone like James Anderson picked up a ball and looped it around instantly? Of course not. These are abilities that resulted from hard work, good coaching, guidance and technical assessments.

Things like technique are not inherently as natural as being argued here. The belief that someone just has natural or tuned way to hit a ball, and that they retain this exact same stance throughout their career is, quite flatly, also nonsense. Cricket is very similar to golf in its reliance of mechanical movements and body positioning to strike the ball, and I have seen more than a few golfing coaches demonstrate how golfers "natural swings" always change minutely everytime they swing a club. Sean Foley for instance once did a video where Justin Rose came back after a break and his swing was wildly different to what he had monitored before in training. Rose was clueless to this change, he felt everything he did was natural, and that the mistakes in his technique were a mystery to him. It needed a biomechanical expert to demonstrate these changes, and when corrected he hit the ball pure instead of shanking it.... Rose said the "right" way felt wrong, but became to feel right when engrained through hitting the ball a 1000 times. This is basic technical work, it applies to all sports. You need to work constantly to stop your technique regressing.

You might think what is the point of all this? Well, yesterday when I was reading Liam Livingstone's post I could see parallels and truths in what he was saying about his treatment in the team, and the management solutions that Key describes. Its easy to dismiss Livingstone as being bitter after being dropped, and having a pop aimlessly at those he blames, but put his loss of form in context of the system created. Justin Rose is a major winning golfer, former world number 1, Olympic Gold Medalist - he is an elite, a generational quality golfer - if he technically decline and needs someone to help reset and help him rediscover what to do right, doesn't anyone? The idea that you just need to go hit some balls and get back into the groove is idiotic when your approach has engrained to hit the ball technically wrongly. You can hit 3000 balls, and just like Rose, it will feel right but come out wrong.

What is a coaches job, if not to do this? Isn't that literally what the difference between a manager and coach is? A coach is actively coaching players, improving them, a manager sets tactics and manages his coaches - the fact its always been a "coach" in cricket is because that is what is expected from the sport due to its nature. You go away 6 months a year with players, international cricketers don't really have access to other coaches, they need it from the national team ones. A coach that doesn't coach is about as useful as a chocolate fireguard. What exactly is their role in the team if they just tell people to go smack some balls, but aren't actually telling them how to smack balls?

As I said, its easy to dismiss Livingstone as being bitter, but I find it shocking in the extreme that a player losing their form would ask coaches to assist in helping him correct or analyse his technique, and be told he "cared too much". We shouldnt be surprised though, neither doubt the truth of his opinion, Key has already explained this is what they do. This is the system. The coach creates the vibes and tell you to do what you do in the highlight reel. That's all you get. You are on your own for everything else.

There is obviously a place for managing players, encouraging them, allowing to express themselves, allowing them to fail knowing they are backed if they do everything right - but this being the ONLY thing that matters is quite frankly insane. Cricket is a brutal game, it doesn't matter how you crush a cover drive, or even matter really how long you want to bat or your desire... you can set out to mentally score 900 every innings, concentration 100%, desire 100%... and then one ball into your innings if your feet doesn't quite get to the pitch its all for nothing, you will snick off and walk back. Technique is the facilitator to everything else. Without it everything is meaningless.

In the end, we end up with players like Zak Crawley coming to define this system. I imagine a 40 second video of Crawley smoking bowlers around would be as visually spectacular as anyone, he absorbed the spirit of Bazball as much as anyone, goes out and throws the kitchen sink at it, has been afforded endless scope to fail. And the net result has made no difference at all. He is, and always has been, a spectacular shot maker with an obvious weakness technically to tight off stump bowling - unsurprisingly, after 64 tests in a system where nothing has been attempted to improve his defensive technique, he is still a batsman limited by that weakness. It has come to define him. You can give him 364 test matches, but he averages 30 in FC cricket for a reason, he replicated that in test cricket for a reason. His technical problems come to define his career perfectly. You can't expect someone with obviously limiting technical issues to overcome them purely by compensating for brilliance elsewhere, not if the issue is so defined.

All of this explains also why England's preparations have been so terrible. Why bother hiring coaches if they aren't actually coaching? Save yourself some money, hire someone to repeat the mantra "Trust the process", don't bother hiring all of Bazza's Kiwi ex-colleagues on a few 100k to just be there offering no technical support. I jest, but doesn't this explain the absence of thought in this area? The concern in the media was it was a shambles we delayed hiring coaches so long, the real issue is we probably did that because its deemed unnecessary to hire coaches in the first place!!

And why bother practicing for 5 days before a test? If skills aren't part of the coaching, and all you are doing is whacking balls, then you may as well not bother. You may as well go get P8ssed and chill out. Again, using the Rose example, they are probably whacking balls wrongly anyway, so without any help, why bother? Whacking balls is literally just engraining the issues.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Good read. Hope Mad Rob gets to see it!

Sounds like the opposite of the Andy Flower method.

[sussexpob]

Key strikes me as one of those guys you typically find in professional environments who has been reliably solid in relatively junior leadership roles, but does not have the experience or knowledge to handle such a stark jump in responsibility to a very senior position. It is usual for such people to be hijacked by junior members around them who drive ideas or have some form of strong vision, and I certainly get the feeling that most of what has came to be is the result of McCullum's certainty of vision occupying the space in a vacuum where Key has none.

Key talks about Bazza and Stokes like they are mates, and not his N-1 and N-2. He talks of how the management shape decisions through the processes in place, but then counter acts this by saying that much of the final decisions pass through the lower levels to make key decisions. I can't imagine in many professional environments a situation where people 2-3 role levels below you are making final decisions that involve the whole spectrum of a project. Its just basic management, someone like Stokes or Baz should be important parts of shaping the managers decision, but a manager shouldn't be getting reports from 15 people, then leaving decisions to be made lower down. That is just chaos.

You see this again with people like Bashir. Key says the final decision on team selection goes to the captain for a given match, because he has got to be the person being confident in his side. I guess in Australia Ben Stokes had no confidence in Bashir, but why is Bashir there then? You put a process in place to identify his talent, your coaches in the Lions validated the choice, your performance manager and selection teams decided he was our best spin option and took him on tour, you decided that players deficiencies were not important and that its all about the upside, you talk (and Key made this point specifically) about overspin and bounce suiting the conditions and that he was a horses for courses pick.... all of the system in place, and all of the decision makers in the chain decided Bashir was the man to play, and then 1 day before each test someone in a junior position rejects that process based on their own subjectivity? This isn't the way management decisions should be made.

And that's really the problem. Does Key have any authority whatsoever? I don't get any sense of it. He doesn't act like a manager, he acts like one of the lads. McCullum is driving the bus off a cliff, its time to grow some balls and put him in his place, fight back. I for one do not believe in the slightest that Rob Key, a county stalwart most his adult life, has such dull views of county cricket. I don't believe he buys deep down into a lot of this nonsense, he just regurgitates it because that agenda took over. But it will cost him his job if he stands by and watches.

[sussexpob]

As evidence of the above point, one should ask serious questions as to how England's Team Director ended on the podcast of one of their junior subordinates in the first place, joking around and chatting like they are mates. Buttler is about 4 role levels junior to Key, did no one at any stage at the ECB think it was inappropriate behaviour of a manager?

Buttler's form has plummeted, his performance at the T20I WC has raised serious questions about his position in the team. Who now controls the destiny of his future? Who has to make that tough decision on whether he stays or goes, whether he gets another central contract?

Rob Key. The man who sat down for coffee and giggles with the player not that long ago, chatting away like long lost mates and exchanging pleasantries.

The optics are just horrendous. Buttler is a fine player, retaining him would be justified, but you invite problems into the conversation when you do things like this. How would other players next off the block, or players getting their cut contract feel about it? Will they feel they lost lots of money and their international career on a fully objective decision? Or will see it as unfair or potentially influenced by the manager and other players relationships?

Livingstone clearly thought the latter, and he has reason to be aggrieved. Again this is really simple stuff.

[Durhamfootman]

Harmy is one of Key's best mates, but even he has been on the airwaves lamenting and disagreeing with a lot of this approach since it became clear that the ashes were going to go belly up. I'm guessing that, like many, he was waiting to see whether England were going to do something remarkable first. He seems particularly agitated over the appointment of Southee as bowling coach and then letting him go off to fulfil other commitments whilst the ashes were on and replacing him with David Saker who doesn't know anything at all about the current crop of bowlers and so wasn't in any sort of position to help them. He thinks McCullum should have gone

[Durhamfootman]

for my part, as long as Key has the humility to accept that things need to change in the approach and then acts upon acceptance, then I think there is some merit in the Ashley Giles response from 4 years ago. You can sack me, you can sack the head coach, but if you don't fundamentally change the structure of cricket in England, then you'll be having the same conversation in 4 years time. Well, they did sack everybody, they didn't address the problems in the way cricket is played and the same conversations happened 4 years later. Key has the chance to change things, so it's up to him to justify keeping his position. I have no idea if he can do any of that, though, so if he can't then he should be moved out at the first sign of a cosy lack of progress

I don't believe for a moment that McCullum is even willing to fundamentally change anything, beyond making placating, disingenuous noises that he thinks people want to hear, which is why I think he should be sacked

[sussexpob]

Harmy is one of Key's best mates, but even he has been on the airwaves lamenting and disagreeing with a lot of this approach since it became clear that the ashes were going to go belly up. I'm guessing that, like many, he was waiting to see whether England were going to do something remarkable first. He seems particularly agitated over the appointment of Southee as bowling coach and then letting him go off to fulfil other commitments whilst the ashes were on and replacing him with David Saker who doesn't know anything at all about the current crop of bowlers and so wasn't in any sort of position to help them. He thinks McCullum should have gone

As I said, they aren't shy about saying technical or skills work isn't something they do, so this is all irrelevant really. You can have the best coaches to ever grace sport, but if their role is limited to making sure they are on time for the 18:00 hours sundowner party on the beach, it matters little. England went to OZ with 3 out of 4 of their technical coaches from New Zealand that have some long-term personal attachment to McCullum, one of which had never worked in cricket until 2025, and one that wasn't even committed to stay the entire series. They didn't even deem it necessary to take a fielding coach, despite having one recruited for the LO teams (Hoppo has been released after the T20I WC and not replaced I add, and now went to the Mumbai Indians).

If the coach doesn't really care about specialist coaches, then its interesting 75% of the appointments he made pre-Ashes were for his guys. Why not dish out some free lunch tickets to your friends for roles you don't care about? It feels very much like the coaching appointments are this.

The appointment of Saker was amusing, they justified the delay, short term appointment, and reasonings on the fact they wanted top talent available who were experts in Australia. The spin coach is a Kiwi, The batting coach English, we have no fielding coach, the series started with a Kiwi bowling coach, the mental skills coach is a Kiwi..... So yeah. They reminded us they needed expert advice for all roles, and then hired one after 2 tests for one discipline.

Conclusion once again.... if its smells like a clown at work, it probably is.

[sussexpob]

for my part, as long as Key has the humility to accept that things need to change in the approach and then acts upon acceptance, then I think there is some merit in the Ashley Giles response from 4 years ago. You can sack me, you can sack the head coach, but if you don't fundamentally change the structure of cricket in England, then you'll be having the same conversation in 4 years time. Well, they did sack everybody, they didn't address the problems in the way cricket is played and the same conversations happened 4 years later. Key has the chance to change things, so it's up to him to justify keeping his position. I have no idea if he can do any of that, though, so if he can't then he should be moved out at the first sign of a cosy lack of progress

When you make it your sole identity to rip up and burn the established historical playbook, I don't see how you can then go full circle and start to embrace it. I have seen Key justify the processes the team have adopted on the idea that more naturally accepted methods didn't work before they came to the role, but that to me is a bit like saying "well we tried to defend last week and conceded 2 goals, so we may as well throw 9 players forward".

For me, this is just confusing two very different things, specifically in this case equating the bad implementation or execution of a sound idea to a simple bad idea. As an example, it was entirely sound to pick Jonny Bairstow and give him a long run in the team, the fact that he never became an elite player does not make the idea of picking the players who score the most runs in CC a bad one. It makes more sense to say after 10 years in the international team, why did he never correct those issues where he was weak to the ball angle into his stumps at fuller lengths? Is this a failure of the idea, or is this a failure of the coaching staff to identify technical issues and correct them? Or maybe a failure of the player to do so, it does happen. The current England management basically argue that the Bairstows of yesteryear show that its pointless looking at runs in judging players. And the player never worked his technical game to perfection in 10 years, so its pointless to try.

Phrasing it differently, its like you are taking the most efficient and objectively successful way to recruit and improve players throughout sporting history, and using the imperfections in that system as justification to turn it on its head and do the opposite. Some great players from CCs fail, so CC is meaningless. Its irrelevant that in actual fact, CC performance as a metric for international success would probably be true of 90% of players. We had a few years in 150 years where the model threw up some dirth, so lets ignore all common sense and historical metrics and assume the opposite. We have ended with a situation where scoring 20 runs more per innings on average is meaningless if the coach decides in a 40 second Instagram video he don't like what he sees.

The fact that the selection process ignores performance AND has no interest in assessing weaknesses that players have and technically correct them... well, its the perfect storm of idiocy. The very justification for picking players who don't perform in CC is that you pick on them on the belief that you can mould them into great players by correcting their problems. If you don't try to correct their problems, they are just players who can't do well against inferior class of opponents. Why on gods earth would you expect such people to do better? I mean it seriously, how on earth can you come to that conclusion?

As I said, the net result is Zak Crawley, probably the biggest English cricketing failure ever to play as many tests as he has. After 70 odd tests of now bothering to improve his defensive technique, at what point do we accept that this is the reason he averages 31? 70 tests is a very long test career, its pretty indicative. The truth is, you get exactly what you expect. He fails because he isn't good enough. He isn't good enough because you aren't acknowledging he isn't good enough, not having him identify and work on his technical areas that hold him back.

I reckon if you gave Zak a few months with a world class batting coach, he'd be a better player. Hell, he could even be a world class one if he closed out that 4th stump loophole, he has a range of brilliant strokes to cash in on if survives long enough to unravel them. But the first stage is admitting you have a problem.

[sussexpob]

Sounds like the opposite of the Andy Flower method.

Flower pinned his belief in the fact that certain calibre of humans had the capacity to learn and develop, and so set the metrics to determine potential based around criteria like one's capacity to learn in an academic sense, or in picking people who had somewhat robotic, straitlaced personalities. These types of people would be receptive to coaching and learn and develop from it. There is no surprise that Flower had contempt for players like KP who were living examples that disproved his theory. Independent, highly skilled mavericks were not his thing.

Andy Flower would have picked Iain Dowie over Maradona. His pathway system was designed to do so.

[Durhamfootman]

I would have picked Iain Dowie over Maradona too. Besides, Maradona would have been a fraction of the player he was after I'd finished repeatedly kicking him in the nuts for being a coked up cheating tw@t

[Arthur Crabtree]

I remember Flowerism as being about improving marginal factors... which eventually became an unsustainable mania, which is a risk with any rigid system. Maybe someone outside the setup should have kept an eye on that. But it looks like now they have adopted a very different inflexibility.

[sussexpob]

I remember Flowerism as being about improving marginal factors... which eventually became an unsustainable mania, which is a risk with any rigid system. Maybe someone outside the setup should have kept an eye on that. But it looks like now they have adopted a very different inflexibility.

Its like I said a couple of posts ago with concern to scouting but that applies equally here, we seem to have got to the stage of seeing the imperfect application of good ideas as an excuse to rip everything up and burn it. I think its fair to say that I am critical of Flower as much as anyone, but even I couldn't argue there isn't merit to how he coached. For a brief period it was enough to get England to the top and winning big series away - I said at the time it wasn't sustainable for reasons it subsequently exploded apart, that was obvious. And Flower's grand strategic plans were flat out bad.

But a smart man looks at Flower's success and decline and sees maybe 75% of a perfect plan. I don't care what anyone says, training hard, preparing hard, having accountability, being honest and brutal about failures, being fit, etc etc... these apply to all elite teams, across all sports. But sometimes you need to be flexible and adaptable. Sometimes the lads need a night off or a lie in, sometimes they need a light session. Sometimes they need to eat something that didn't come from a fade diet book or have a whiskey. And one thing that is clear in all elite coaches you read about - be aware everyone contributes.

Key and McCullum ignore all that. Preparing, creating a hard environment, being accountable..... cliches are cliches for a reason. If you think you are smarter than 150 years of cricketing teams doing the same thing for a reason, then you probably aren't that smart at all.