Chris Silverwood is a promising young cricket coach. He may well go on to be a very good cricket coach (like Gary Kirsten or Graham Ford already are). However, nobody knows at this stage. He has only been the head coach of a professional cricket team for two years before now. Appointing him is therefore a massive and unnecessary gamble.
I outlined why Gary Kirsten (with someone like Chris Silverwood or Paul Collingwood assisting him when he’s on sabbatical) would’ve been my choice yesterday. Therefore I’m not going to bang exactly the same drum today. Instead I want to critique the ECB’s thinking in appointing him, and explain why I believe their thinking is flawed IF (and when it comes to the ECB it’s always a big IF) their publicly declared objectives really are their true objectives.
After England failed to win The Ashes on home soil for the first time since 2001, Ashley Giles, who has now botched the 3 main challenges he’s been presented with (the Alex Hales drugs dilemma, the Joe Clarke and Tom Kohler Cadmore problem, and now appointing a new head coach) claimed that improving the test team would be his priority.
Unfortunately, appointing Chris Silverwood is completely the wrong way to do this. In fact, appointing Silverwood suggests that the focus will very much remain white ball cricket. Here’s why …
When you appointing a coach who was already in situ, a bit like when the RFU appointed Andy Robinson to replace Sir Clive Woodward, the goal is surely continuity. Indeed, Giles has stressed how familiarity with England’s existing ‘systems’ (pass the sick bucket) was one of the main reasons why Silverwood got the job:
He is somebody we know well, but it is his intimate understanding of our structures and systems and his close relationships with Test captain Joe Root and white-ball captain Eoin Morgan that will help us develop our plans for the next few years.
When you appoint a continuity candidate you’re basically saying that you’d don’t want things to change. You’re on to a good thing and if it’s not broken why fix it? After all, there’s nothing the promoted assistant can say, or add to that magic elixir, that he wouldn’t have passed on to the players already during his time as assistant.
Now I may just be a humble blogger, and I’ve never played sport at a professional level, but you don’t need to be Richie Benaud to realise that the last thing the England test team needs right now is continuity. The ODI team, on the other hand …
The appointment of Silverwood makes no sense if the ECB are genuinely serious about improving our red ball fortunes. The big problem with the England test team is it’s batting unit. It’s no secret. The whole world knows it. We’ve been bowled out in less than a session four times in the space of two years and we’ve got possibly the weakest top 6 in the history of English cricket. So why would an competent governing body want to promote the existing bowling coach? How on earth is that going to improve the batting?
One of the reasons why everyone was so enthused about the potential appointment of Kirsten is that he might have taught our ailing batsmen a thing or two. He might have instilled the skills and mental approach required to dig in and compile big test match winning hundreds. Gary Kirsten scored played 101 tests, scored 7000 test runs, and made 21 centuries at an average of 45. Chris Silverwood played 6 tests, and scored 29 runs at an average of 7 (with a top score of 10).
The other reason why Chris Silverwood’s promotion smacks of white ball bias relates to the one perceived weakness in Gary Kirsten’s resume. When it comes to test cricket Kirsten’s CV is unblemished. He took South Africa to No.1 in the test rankings and his India team went unbeaten in eleven consecutive series. However, his record in white ball cricket isn’t quite as stellar.
Kirsten has enjoyed some success in global tournaments but also some disappointments – his India side won the World Cup in 2011 but his South Africa team lost all their Super 8 games in the T20 world cup, and he was recently sacked as head coach of IPL franchise Royal Challengers Bangalore. Consequently, if one was looking for reasons not to appoint him it might very well be this – although publicly this hasn’t been mentioned, of course.
According to reports Kirsten blew his chances of landing the England job for three reasons (a) he gave an underwhelming presentation at interview (whereas Silverwood’s presentation was excellent), (b) Kirsten wanted to spend more time with his family than England were willing to offer, and (c) Giles wanted to win favour with the counties by appointing an Englishman after the ECB appointed eight foreign Hundred coaches. I believe all three factors are complete red herrings.
As I argued yesterday, a coach’s ability with PowerPoint is about as relevant as a cook’s ability to write poetry. It basically doesn’t matter. And if I was a coach of Kirsten’s reputation I’d somewhat take offence (or at least be bored silly) at the prospect of presenting to cricketing pygmy’s like Tom Harrison and John Neal (who were the other two people in the room alongside Giles).
Top coaches like Kirsten are usually head hunted. They should not be asked to jump through unnecessary hoops just so prospective employers can tick boxes and pretend that they’re going through a thorough ‘process’.
Re: the argument that Kirsten wanted to spend too much time with his family, call me sceptical. Yes, it’s well known that Kirsten values his time at home, but this was supposed to have been sorted out before he flew over to England for talks. Indeed, it had been reported that Giles had already made sufficient concessions for Kirsten to be a goer; therefore it seems incredibly unlikely that they simply misunderstood each other when they’d previously spoken on the phone.
Kirsten has stressed the importance of family in every international coaching role he’s ever taken. It would’ve been the very first thing they thrashed out before Kirsten was added to any shortlist. Blaming his family commitments now, in what seems to be a desperate exercise in post-rationalisation, seems very strange to me.
Finally, when it comes to the counties, Giles should’ve had the strength to ignore them and simply appoint the best man for the job. Who cares, at this point, that the ECB was foolish enough to appoint eight foreigners to those lucrative Hundred franchises? That shouldn’t be Giles’s problem. The priority here is the England test team not the sensibilities of counties angry at someone else’s stupidity.
Meanwhile, if Harrison and Graves were leaning on Giles to appoint an Englishman (because of their previous error) he should’ve had the strength to tell them where to go. Why should the England test team suffer any more at the hands of the ludicrous Hundred gamble? Giles priority should be to improve the England test team not play politics.
Yes there will be supporters who disagree with every word above. They’ll say it’s exciting to finally have an English coach like Gareth Southgate. They’ll ignore the fact that Southgate had been a club manager for 3 seasons, had managed England U21s for a further 3 years, and had even had a successful stint as caretaker England boss before he was given the job permanently.
What’s more, the most successful cricket head coaches England have had in recent years have all been foreign: Duncan Fletcher, Andy Flower, and (in white ball) Trevor Bayliss. The most recent English coaches have been Peter Moores (twice), David Lloyd, and Ray Illingworth, none of whom impressed.
Yes it would be nice for England to appoint an English coach in an ideal world. But only when there’s a strong candidate available. Bob Woolmer, for example, would’ve been perfect back in the day. Unfortunately, however, such a candidate doesn’t currently exist. What’s more, I do not understand why Chris Silverwood was any more attractive to Giles than Paul Collingwood and Graham Thorpe (who at least have far more international experience as players).
Anyway, what’s done is done. We should all get behind Silverwood now and wish him all the best. Yes the thought process behind his appointment was all wrong, but since when does anything in English cricket make sense?
We’ve reached No.1 in the rankings and beaten Australia down under before despite the idiosyncratic manner in which our game is run; therefore we can surely do it again. We just have to hope that Chris Silverwood is the occasional shot in the dark that somehow pays off. It would make a nice change from shooting ourselves in the foot.
James Morgan
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When you are the King of Spain and earn the sobriquet ‘wheelie-bin’ it says it all really!
The problem is all the comments attendant on the original article appear to have been lost.
Why appoint a bowler when we desperately need a good batting coach? No doubt Giles has had his arm twisted, but he’s just a yes man which is why he’s even in the job. Turning down an International coach just adds to the utter stupidly that is the ECB. Shame the counties have given up the right to vote these idiots off. Maybe come the revolution…..
Good article. I would have thought that with the possibility of securing Gary Kirsten the process should have gone something like:
Here is the form – we have left the salary blank so that you can name your own price, and there is the dotted line at the bottom which we would ike you to sign.
Giving the job to Silverwood could turn out be a “Jofra Archer” moment or it could be a “Jason Roy as red ball opener” moment – whereas Kirsten would definitely have been excellent.
Agreed. Silverwood may turn out well in the end but it’s a mighty gamble. Plus we desperately need the batting experience and expertise that Kirsten would’ve undoubtedly brought.
Best comment I’ve seen so far was on the Guardian thread where some declared Sliverwood must be good because he discovered Simon Harmer “from nowhere” (although maybe the commenter is just ahead of the times because in a few years this will probably be quite an accurate description of the South Africa test team).
BTW let’s not forget the departure of Shine and Such from Loughbrough. What will England do without all that talent they’ve pipelined?
The real problem is that there aren’t any top English coaches. They’re all mediocre.
You can either be a nationalist, or you can have a top coach. You can’t do both.
Actually the ECB did neither. Surely if you’re going to come over all nationalist about it–Ricky Skerritt is expressing those kind of sentiments over the WI coaching job–then do what WI did and select an all-local shortlist. (Bearing in mind also that WI have a lot fewer coaching resources than England!)
Most of the people I saw “linked” with the job at various stages (Kirsten, Ford, Gibson, Moody, Arthur) are not English. They seem to have gone in some ways for the worst of both the worlds you mention.
As to why they might have appointed Silverwood over Thorpe, I think you might have anwered your own question with your points about England’s batting! My question is not why Silverwood has been preferred over him, but why England have persisted at all (at least for the test team) with one of the architects of their inconsistent batting over the last few years. I can see the logic of keeping him for the one-day teams, but the evidence that he can get England’s batsmen to bat like a Test top six is very thin indeed!
As to the objections about not having an English coach, that would be total hypocrisy coming from the counties, since it was the Hundred teams’ managing boards (not the ECB) who appointed them. I fail to see that argument anyway: if there was an outstanding English candidate to coach a one-day team, then you’d expect them to have a consistent track record of coaching an English team to one-day success. Which leaves who, exactly? Even some of the counties that have had a lot of one-day success this decade (Hants, Worcs) have done it under two or three different coaches. The only ones I can think of are Moores, Ripley (both of whom seem better at coaching teams who are not quite top tier, which won’t be what a Hundred board wants to hear) and Robinson. And would you really jump at the chance to employ any of thos three when you could have Fleming or Jayawardene, say?
I like your comment purely because I am a Northants fan and you mentioned David Ripley. I should point out, though, that Thorpe has only been England batting coach for this last season (which, it could be said, saw both a nadir and late signs of improvement). Previously Mark Ramprakash was in charge.
One of those headlines you read about 5 times because you can’t believe it.
Given the prevailing priorities of Messers Harrison and Graves, who are effectively the ECB exevutive, appointing the devil you know is the best way of protecting your interests. Whatever noises Giles makes about prioritising test cricket he is limited by his bosses infatuation with the white ball cash cow.
Nothing will happen to improve the test team without a major overhaul of the county championship, in terms of when its played and how the coaching is applied. To this end does it really matter who is head coach. Could Kirsten really have a significant effect on our red ball performances when he has no power to effect change in the underlying cause of the problem?
We’ve just had the most successful high profile cricketing summer in living memory, so why should the ECB think there’s any major problem. Their policies were a major part of England’s success, which as far as they’re concerned outweighed the failures by a distance. Despite our Ashes batting problems if we’d had a fit Anderson that would probably have been enough to tip the balance and retain the Ashes, so for them we’re not that far from having a serviceable test team.
I’m not agreeing with their direction, just pointing out how they can easily justify their thinking.
Graham Gooch for batting coach
I am quite happy with Silverwood as coach. I repeat, I am quite happy with Silverwood as coach