Bleacher Report - Articles by Paddy Briggs

Open Letter to David Collier, CEO of England Cricket Board

Paddy Briggs — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 10:44:36 -0500

Dear Mr. Collier,

It seems that you feel you have no reason to resign over the "Stanford debacle" and that Giles Clarke and the rest of the England Cricket Board support you; Well they would say that wouldn’t they?

A recent poll in The Guardian reported 86 percent of respondents thought Clarke should resign. This includes the bias from the medium, and statistical error that shows what the vast majority of the cricket loving public in England think as well.

And as Clarke himself has made clear, the monkey sits as much on your back as it does on his. After all, you are the senior employee of the ECB and had a clear accountability for the Stanford deal.

The overwhelming tenor of the comments in the media, on cricket Web sites, and throughout the country is that this scandal is one too far for the ECB, and that the responsibility lies fairly and squarely with Giles Clarke and with you.

You might argue about the minutiae of the due diligence carried out on Stanford and whether it should have covered more than just his ability to pay.

You may argue, as you have, that you, "Believe therefore that I could not have done more at that time and I don't think the board could have done more.”

Few objective observers would concur with that self-promoting claptrap.

David, the time has come to go. Your position is untenable.

"You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go."

Sincerely,

Paddy Briggs

The Lions Tour: Logic Defeated By Sentiment and The Mighty Dollar

Paddy Briggs — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:30:04 -0500

The replica Lions shirt in the RFU shop costs £99.99—a mark-up, I suspect, of perhaps £95 over the production costs. And the back page advertisement from Thomas Cook in your newspaper offers tours starting from £1999 to see one "Test" and £2499 to see two. And that pretty much sums up the rationale for this year's commercial bonanza in South Africa.

The Lions in 2005 were not humiliated by the All Blacks because of the deficiencies of Alastair Campbell nor by the mistakes of Clive Woodward. They were beaten because a southern hemisphere side will never again be beaten by a rag, tag and bobtail assemblage of British Isles players, however individually talented these players may be.

The South Africans are full time professionals both individually and as a unit. The hastily assembled Lions cannot possibly be expected to gel together as efficiently and skilfully as the Springboks—they will be lucky to avoid defeat by less than twenty points in any of their matches against the Boks.

In the days of amateur international rugby there was a logic and, yes, a romance about the Lions that led to some heroic achievements. But in the professional era a side which plays together continuously for a year or more, as the South Africans will have done, will have a huge edge over a mishmash of players who cannot possibly be as familiar with one another as their opponents will be.

The only justification for the continued existence of the Lions is the commercial bonanza that a Lions tour creates. For me that is insufficient reason for the tour to go ahead—and certainly there is no case at all for international caps to continue to be awarded for these one-sided and irrelevant matches.

Inzy's Languid Duck

Paddy Briggs — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:17:08 -0500

Let's go back to England vs. Pakistan at Newlands Cape Town. Cricket World Cup. Feb. 22, 2003.

England bat first and scored a respectable 246. Pakistan followed, but had to bat under lights—never easy as the dew rises and darkness falls.

England's Jimmy Anderson bowling in ideal conditions takes a wicket with the last ball of the second over.

Inzy, moving at a pace which a self-respecting snail would have seen as leisurely, comes to the wicket (eventually) and stands idly by as Saeed Anwar plays out an over.

Then Inzy faces Jimmy with his tail up. Jimmy bowls a peach of a ball which Inzy scoops languidly to Nick Knight at slip. Inzy is out first ball. He waddles even more slowly back to the pavilion.

Jimmy then dismisses Yousuf to take a hat trick. Not Inzy or Pakistan's day. Nary a dry eye in the house!

The Luck Runs Spurs Way at Turf Moor

Paddy Briggs — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 05:51:18 -0500

It was an inspiring and moving experience to be present at both of the Carling Cup semifinal matches between Burnley and Tottenham Hotspur and whilst as a Spurs supporter I was of course pleased that Tottenham scraped through, triumph is the last of the emotions I feel.

This was football at its best and, in many ways, football as it used to be. Whilst the prima donnas of the top clubs in the Premiership fill the tabloid columns and the shenanigans surrounding there ownership creates headlines on the financial as well as the sports pages, Burnley vs. Spurs was all and only about football.

It was as far removed from the grotesquery of Manchester City’s owners trying to buy Kaka and success as it is possible to get.

The core attraction of football, the quality that gave rise to the perhaps overused descriptor "The Beautiful Game", is its simplicity and the way that this allows spectators instantly to relate to the action. We saw two five goal matches at White Hart Lane and at Turf Moor – ten goals in 210 minutes of pulsating football.

The goals, one every 20 minutes or so, were the just rewards for effort and ambition—especially so in Burnley’s case. Football, above all cup football, can be a great leveller and no more so than in this clash in which one team, Spurs, had many players who individually earn more than the total staffing costs of the Burnley squad.

I use “earn” with a slight sense of irony because although there was no lack of effort from Tottenham on the two nights few of the players really justified their big transfer fees or their mega earnings.

With far lesser resources at his disposal Owen Coyle has created a team that completely outplayed Harry Redknapp’s bunch of stars for much of both games.

At the Lane Burnley were by far the better side in the first half and deserved their one goal interval lead – it should have been more. Then, in a 20-minute spell in the second half, Spurs played their best football of the season to score four goals and seemingly put the tie out of Burnley’s reach.

But from the start at Turf Moor there was no feeling of doom, gloom or resignation on the part of the Burnley faithful – nor, crucially, among the players either. There is a symbiosis here which Alastair Campbell (yes that Alastair Campbell) referred to prophetically in the programme:

“Winning 3-0 against a Premiership side of course won’t be easy. But if the players don’t believe it nobody can. And if the players do believe it, then so can we”. Well win 3-0 is exactly what Burnley then did – over 90 minutes. And had this been a European two-leg tie rather than the Carling Cup that would have been it—Burnley would have been on their way to Wembley.

But quirkily the rules of this competition meant that they had to play another thirty minutes without conceding a goal—and that was just beyond them and Spurs escaped with the latest of strikes from Pavlyuchenko and Defoe.

If you are a seeker-after of justice then don’t be a sports fan – that’s not always how it works. The Burnley team and their superb supporters certainly deserved to go to Wembley not just for their efforts and their style but also for their skill and bloody-minded determination not to give up – and for their belief.

They have two more chances this season in the FA Cup and possibly in the play-offs from the Championship. I won’t be the only Spurs supporter wishing them well. On Mar. 1 whilst I’ll be hoping that the Tottenham All-Stars win the Carling Cup I will have a slight embarrassment that the Spurs are there at all and a memory of two semifinal encounters that transcended sport and restored my faith in human nature, if not in natural justice.

We Haven't Seen the Last Of Ron Dennis by Any Means!

Paddy Briggs — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:22:59 -0500

Formula One is a pretty ego driven business. The drivers and, especially, the team owners breathe pretty rarefied air and many of them probably think that they can walk on water as well!

It comes, of course, from the extraordinarily privileged lifestyle that the money in the sport allows them to enjoy. Ron Dennis is no exception and he has gradually, over the years, adapted to the life of the very rich man without too many difficulties. But the driver of Ron’s ambition, like other multi-millionaires including Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore, hasn’t been wealth for quite some time.

Once you get to a certain level of financial security which guarantees the houses, the cars, the holidays, the private jet, the yacht, and the "Mark Two" trophy wives there’s not much more to spend your money on—both Ron and Bernie could have retired from the sport years ago—but their love of it and the status it provides them drove them on.

So, if Ron’s announced intention to leave the daily running of McLaren to Martin Whitmarsh in future is really to be believed then we must also believe that he has completely changed his outlook on life.

No longer will he be sitting on the pit lane wall during races making the decisions—indeed he won’t even be at some Grands Prix if his recent announcements are to be taken on face value. Well maybe—but I really rather doubt it!

McLaren is Ron Dennis in the same way that F1 is Bernie Ecclestone. At 78 Bernie shows no sign of giving up and he will need to be dragged kicking and screaming away from the sport he designed—he isn’t going to walk away, Ron, I suspect, is the same.

Once the season starts he will miss the smell of the oil and the roar of the crowd. If McLaren starts well he’ll want to be there to bask in the glory—in his own understated way of course! On the other hand, if the team stutters in the opening races he’ll want to be there to get them back on track.

We haven’t seen the last of Ron Dennis by any means—he is 16 years younger than Bernie Ecclestone and my guess is that when the men in white coats do finally come for Bernie, Ron will want to be around to step into his shoes!

The Aussies Are Sent to Cardiff for Ashes Opener

Paddy Briggs — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:19:02 -0500

In the last home Ashes series in 2005, England had two matches to remember at Trent Bridge and Old Trafford. At the Nottingham ground they outplayed Australia over most of the match—although they struggled slightly in the fourth innings—before eventually getting home for a fine win.

The same again at Old Trafford where it was England’s match except for a brilliant rearguard match saving innings by Ricky Ponting. An honourable draw in the end but England played well at a ground that is often kind to them.

So do the 2009 Aussie tourists need to worry about England at Trent Bridge and Old Trafford? Not at all for there won’t even be Test matches played at these two venues. It defies belief that grounds where England go well against the Old Enemy aren’t in the schedules at all this time around.

Instead, we have the absurd sight of the opening Test match not even being in England at all. On 8th July Ricky P and whoever is England captain that week face off against each other at Cardiff. I kid you not—it’s the Welsh capital which hosts the most eagerly awaited Test match in these isles for nearly four years.

So what’s the story?

Well, the last Chairman of the ECB (The England and Wales Cricket Board) was a Taff—David Morgan is a businessman from the valleys and a keen Glamorgan supporter.

Morgan worked hard behind the scenes (and sometimes in front of them) with a “Taffia” which included establishment figures like Tony Lewis (once a Welsh Captain of England) and cricket manager Hugh Morris (also a daffodil wearer).

Funding was found from official (Welsh) sources to upgrade the Cardiff ground—although it will still hold barely 15,000 spectators—a few thousand less that Cardiff City FC get for their home matches in second tier English soccer down the road at Ninian Park.

Cardiff has never hosted a Test match before and for their first go to be an Ashes Test—when historic grounds like Trent Bridge and Old Trafford miss out—is extraordinary.

But then most things about the bizarre and sometimes borderline corrupt English/Welsh cricket administration is surprising much of the time.

Michael Brearley's Time Has Come to Lead England Cricket

Paddy Briggs — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 04:20:01 -0500

Cometh the hour cometh the man.

And for England cricket, could there be any doubt that the hour is nigh and that there is a desperate need for capable and moral leadership at the top?

Under the malignant Chairmanship of Giles Clarke the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has plumbed new depths—as the events of the past few months in respect of the England captaincy have shown beyond doubt.

I use the timeframe “months,” not “weeks,” because it stretches back to the day in early August when Michael Vaughan and Paul Collingwood stood down as captains of the England Test and One Day sides respectively.

To stand down in the middle of a series is not unprecedented—but for men of Vaughan and Colly’s status and integrity to feel that they had no alternative but to fall on their swords says clearly that all was not right in the England set up.

Where were the man-management skills in the England playing set up when we needed them? Surely if the relationship between Hugh Morris, Peter Moores, Vaughan and Collingwood had been as it should have been, then any need for change in the captaincy would have been anticipated and handled in a less panicky way.

Vaughan’s stress and disappointment was for all to see in his tearful press conference – he didn’t (quite) lose his dignity but there is no way that he should have felt obliged to walk the plank so publicly in the way that he did. The Test series was already lost—surely Vaughan could have been given support by the ECB hierarchy for one more Test match—and then any issues over the captaincy could have been dealt with in a calmer environment at the end of the series.

And Collingwood was treated an a pretty cavalier way as well. He was clearly pushed—he didn’t jump—when the ECB decided that they wanted one captain in future and that he was not that man.

Whilst Hugh Morris as Managing Director of England Cricket was the man with the monkey on his shoulder above him was the highly paid CEO of the ECB, David Collier and the controversial Chairman of the board Giles Clarke. What role did they play in the whole affair—and more recently what role have they all played in the extraordinary events of the past couple of weeks with Kevin Pietersen?

“A fish rots from the head,” as the Russian proverb has it, and it’s a pretty apposite comment on the main reason for the rotten state of English cricket at the moment.

The head of English cricket since September 2007 has been Giles Clarke, who is Chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB)—and the charge sheet against him is a long and damning one. Fortunately his tenure runs only to March 2009, and the 18 first-class counties will have the chance to send him packing shortly.

This is why they should:

Elitism. He referred to those with no access to satellite TV as "less fortunate members of society,” and sold us down the river to Sky.

Ignorance. He is a businessman, with no real knowledge of the game, which led to the vulgarity of Stanford, and the continued confusions on Twenty20.

Insensitivity. He sits on top of a hierarchy but seems to have no feelings for the inter-personal issues down the line—Vaughan, Collingwood, Moores, Pietersen...

Complacency. Whilst Clarke is blusteringly bullish on frivolities like Stanford (etc.), he has failed completely to get to the heart of English cricket’s problems with reform of the unsustainable county structure.

There has to be someone of substance out there to challenge this man, or he will be re-elected unopposed for a second term.

Mike Brearley, since retiring from the First Class game in 1983 has concentrated on his second career as a psychotherapist, and until recently he has never held an executive role in the game.

He has, however, written wisely and often both as a journalist and, particularly, in his seminal book “The Art of Captaincy”. His knowledge and track record as a leading thinker on cricket is not in doubt. Nor is his moral integrity and courage—as he showed, in particular, back in 1968/9 over the D’Oliveira affair.

Brearley was the previous President of the Marylebone Cricket Club—a role he performed with distinction showing that he love for the game and his understanding of what matters on and off the field are undiminished. He would make an honourable, skillful and respected chairman of the ECB.

I have little doubt that if Brearly stood against Giles Clarke he would be elected by the 18 counties (plus the MCC) who vote on the appointment. If ever there was a time when there was a need to restore harmony in English cricket and have the game driven with somebody who has other criteria of judgment than just the commercial/financial it is now.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man, indeed!

Kevin Pietersen: The England and Wales Cricket Board Failed to Manage Him

Paddy Briggs — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 04:43:05 -0500

In those increasingly distant days when I was corporate man (sort of) management training courses often liked to characterise management style in shorthand. One of the theories, which I always rather liked, was the idea that as individuals we can all be seen as being more or less task oriented and more or less process oriented.

In general an extreme propensity to focus pragmatically on the task in hand is unlikely to be compatible with an individual also having a strong emphasis on ensuring that the correct processes are followed—and vice versa. It’s not quite as black and white as that, but as a quick description of different styles it is quite handy.

Organisations need both types and ideally amongst their more senior people they need those with a blend of task and process orientation. In reality the head honchos in any hierarchy are far more likely to be process focused whilst the more junior staff are more likely to be effective if they concentrate on the task in hand.

But at all levels in the hierarchy you will find those who will cut corners and bend the rules in order to achieve an immediate goal—and also those who will be anxious to stick rigorously with the process—and sometimes miss opportunities as a result.

OK enough of the management speak—what’s this got to do with cricket and the role of the captain in the game? Well for me it is reasonably self-evident that the captain of a cricket team should be primarily task oriented—indeed you could argue that this is the case for any sportsman at any time. Ask Steve Waugh or Roger Federer or Tiger Woods.

But the Captain has not only to focus on the task in hand but get his team to do so as well—and in modern sport there are plenty of distractions around. Steve Waugh’s recipe sounds like a pretty good one:

“Captaincy is about empowerment, about making your players responsible for their actions and, in turn, accountable. It’s about treating everyone equally but differently by recognising there are varied characters and personalities who need to express their individual flair and instincts inside the ultimate team vision.”

If that makes the job sound difficult then Mike Brearley makes it sound even more so:

“The captain…is bound to be the recipient of emotional demands and pressures from those he is responsible for. A good leader or manger is interested in what makes people tick, particularly when they seem to be difficult or withdrawn or under-achieving.”

Steve Waugh and Mike Brearley were both great captains – albeit that they have very different personal styles. But neither was an instant success. Although they had both led other teams before becoming an international captain the demands of the bigger job are such that in a way nothing really prepares you for it.

And when Kevin Pietersen took over from Michael Vaughan just before the Oval Test against South Africa match in August 2008 he was even less prepared—his captaincy experience was virtually nil. Chutzpah and adrenalin carried KP to a fine win in his first Test match as captain and he followed this with a wonderful 4-0 win in the one-day series as well. Piece of cake.

Except of course that it couldn’t last and the team fared less well in India—although there were not too many criticisms of KP’s captaincy, more of the failures of key players in the team like Bell and Panesar. But in his first matches as captain Pietersen can be seen to have done pretty well—not least when account is taken of the fact that the role had been thrown rather unexpectedly at him after Michael Vaughan’s sudden resignation.

Now let’s return to the management theory about task and process leaders. KP looks like the archetypical task leader to me. This is not to say that he lacks a tactical cricket brain nor that he doesn’t have an “ultimate team vision” as Steve Waugh called it.

But Pietersen seems like the sort of man who really wants results and won’t let anyone stand in his way. More Shane Warne than Steve Waugh—although nobody would really call Waugh anything less than task focused! But Waugh probably wouldn’t have said about the role of the cricket coach that the “only coach a cricket team needs is the one to transport them from their hotel to the ground” as Warney once famously remarked.

And one suspects that Kevin Pietersen would strongly agree with his friend Shane—and that that has been the cause of the recent trouble in the England camp. KP and Peter Moores were two girls trying to share the same stove—and that never works!

So then we have an imperative for our captain to be strongly task oriented, but not to the exclusion of the need also to be a hands-on motivator of men in the Brearley mould. What about process? Well in reality isn’t that someone else’s job? If the skipper is leading his men into battle and leading by example as well isn’t that enough?

If he has a good cricket brain and a good feel for tactics on the field of play, as well as being able to inspire his team and the disparate individuals in it, can’t we leave the process management to someone else? The answer has to be yes.

So when recently KP chose to pick a fight and one that seems at times to have been fought by surrogates and in the media, surely the process folks in the England hierarchy should have intervened? Maybe Hugh Morris did make the ‘phone call to KP and say to him something like:

“Kevin. We are hearing what you say about your relationship with Peter Moores. Please don’t do or say anything precipitate and when you are back in England lets get urgently together to discuss it. The ECB appointed you as captain for the long term and we want you to succeed. But we really must follow a proper process in respect of the definition of roles – including yours and of the coaching team. Please hold fire and we will sort it out together as soon as possible.”

If Hugh Morris did make a call along the lines that I have suggested and KP chose to ignore such a reasonable plea then KP is culpable and deserved to have been sacked. But if the ECB apparatchiks fumbled and flustered when they saw what KP seemed to be up to in relation to Moores and if this led them to private denunciations of KP’s insolence and arrogance but not to a serious attempt to avoid disaster then it is the ECB officials who are seriously to blame.

On TV yesterday both Nasser Hussain and Lord MacLaurin were critical of the behaviour of Kevin Pietersen. Hussain said:

"Definitely, Kevin Pietersen himself should have gone about this in a much more professional way. You can't just sit on safari in South Africa and issue ultimatums to the board about the England cricket captaincy."

and MacLaurin said:

"It is a mess and it is very sad the captain was away in South Africa but as I understand it he put a pistol to the head of the ECB and said, 'Back me or sack me', and I think the ECB were absolutely right. The ideal solution would have been to put Peter Moores and Kevin Pietersen in a room and said, 'Sort out your differences'. Sadly they were unable to do that."

We don’t yet know the full story. Whether the process management of the ECB failed - perhaps because it has been a holiday period and communication was difficult we don’t yet know. Whether KP was really as crass as suggested by Husain and MacLaurin we don’t know either.

But if you accept the principle that you want your suits to manage all the processes well whilst you equip your captain and your team to win cricket matches then on the face of it it is the process managers who have completely failed in this instance. Unless it really is true that KP has acted with a total disregard to appropriate behaviour—in which case the suits shouldn’t have appointed him in the first place! As Nasser Husain also perceptively said:

"The ECB knew from his history what sort of guy (Pietersen) was. He was abrasive, he took people on, he asked questions of people. When he took over the captaincy, he was going to be in your face. They must have known that eventually it was going to come to a clash between Pietersen and Moores and they should have been able to react to that."