The coach is a form of transportation that gets you to the ground. So said the late great Shane Warne , who knew more than most about the game and always had a line to wind up an opponent (in this case, John Buchanan, the man in charge of the Australia team Warne played for).
But then, one of Warne's last gigs before his untimely death a couple of years ago was head coach of London Spirit in the Hundred. Just how much coaching he actually did is open to question, given it was an experimental format, Eoin Morgan was the team's captain… and Warne spent a chunk of his only season in charge isolating due to Covid. Nevertheless, he would have had plenty to pass on, even if some of it was about pizza toppings. Perhaps, given Warne's capacity for misdirection, his original observation was an early outing for the now ubiquitous banter bus rather than a carefully considered personal philosophy.
The wisdom of Warne (or otherwise) came to mind recently, after some high-profile ins and outs on the roster of international coaches. India decided that, after the grace and humility of Rahul Dravid , whose three years at the helm featured appearances in the global showpiece finals for all three formats and culminated with a first World Cup win since 2011 for them, his replacement would be Gautam Gambhir - a man of furiously beetling brow best known for getting into stoushes with the opposition during his roles as an IPL mentor. Oh, and with no actual coaching experience.
Meanwhile, Matthew Mott , whose extensive CV includes multiple world titles across the men's and women's game, was let go halfway through a four-year deal by England having ( checks notes ) just taken them to the T20 World Cup semi-final , where they lost to future champions, India.
Perhaps this all makes more sense when looking at the example provided by England's other head coach, Brendon McCullum , who graduated from twiddling about on the fringes of the Knight Riders T20 multiverse to overseeing a cult movement built in his name within a couple of years. Never mind arranging net practice or helping players with technique, we are now in the era of the coach as hype man, vibes merchant, live-your-best-life guru. These guys wouldn't even take Warne's jibe as a slight. Need a lift? No problem, bro.
Trading on bluster rather than expertise isn't completely revolutionary, of course - Ravi Shastri successfully repurposed his commentary-box routine for the dressing room as one of Dravid's predecessors - but we're in strange territory when Andrew Flintoff is being touted as the man to replace Mott when his most high-profile coaching achievement is teaching some teenagers from Preston not to hate cricket for a BBC documentary.
As with so many things, maybe Warne was closer to the truth than we thought. A coach may not be for getting to the ground, but these days at least, they do need to pump the players' tires.
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This year's edition of the Hundred is supposedly being viewed as a "shop window" by the ECB , as it tries to tempt overseas investors to stick a little money in the kitty for English cricket's long-term benefit. But what if the shop in question is more Poundland than Harrods? (For overseas readers unfamiliar with Poundland, the clue is in the name.) The ECB's proposals to sell shares in the eight teams were described as "delusional" and a "car crash" in one newspaper report - and that was before the opening night of the men's competition , when 100 was less of a description than an unachievable goal (Birmingham Phoenix 89 off 81 beaten by Oval Invincibles 93 off 69). The fear is that whatever the window dressing, franchise owners shopping around for their next shiny toy are quickly going to realise that what's on the plate is a nothing burger…
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Sri Lanka's batting in their recent T20I series with India has already inspired some of the sickest burns you're likely to read on this website. But the epic scale of their self-pwnage in the third match was so bad it almost became good, only to be ruled unspeakably bad in the final analysis. With nine runs needed from 12 balls and six wickets in hand, Sri Lanka faced up to Rinku Singh and Suraykumar Yadav like a collection of tenpins in the crosshairs of Jesus Quintana. Rinku and Suryakumar duly picked off their first four wickets in international T20; Thanos clicking his fingers dreams of causing such destruction. Then, having scrambled a tie to force a Super Over, Sri Lanka managed to score one run off the bat for the loss of two wickets from four balls. Somebody please give this team a Darwin Award.
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