Originally Posted by Bhogle

Somewhere, in this relentless obsession with unearthing India's new coach, it might have slipped the minds of some that coaches don't win matches. Players do and they always have. Coaches might tinker or straighten their game, play a benevolent uncle or a stern elder brother, show a little window of opportunity maybe even open a door, but they cannot win matches. And so while it is important to get a good man, we cannot look upon him as a messiah.

Any cricketer who believes so is diverting his responsibility elsewhere. That is why I love John Buchanan's theory of having a coach but trying to make him redundant. Australia’s players are not encouraged to come to the coach with a problem unless they have worked out their own solution. It suggests that a player is capable of analysing his own game, his own weaknesses and has a clear path, or at least a dusty lane, towards finding an answer. His solution is then debated and between coach and player, they figure out what to do.

Otherwise it is no different from a rich parent appointing an expensive tutor and believing that both his and his child's responsibility is over.

People have played without a coach before. Viv Richards didn't have one, neither did Sunil Gavaskar or Ian Botham. Even Sachin Tendulkar, in his formative years, found that his coaches were changing faster than the calendar on his wall. They got by because they thought about their own game and found solutions within. They might have used a bouncing board but they were capable of independent thought. All good players today are as well and that is why we need to be careful in not equating the arrival of a new coach with say, an ambulance or a fire-engine.

It has long been my conviction that it is the best administered, rather than the best coached, team that wins matches. True, administrators don’t win matches, players do, but they create the systems that allow players to do well. The two best teams in world cricket at the moment are Australia and England and the team that makes the most of its potential is New Zealand. They are the three most professionally administered.

The most wasteful teams in world cricket are India and Pakistan and there are huge problems in the West Indies, in Sri Lanka and in Zimbabwe. These are also the most poorly managed cricket boards. When India and Pakistan enjoy stability at the top, they make the right choices and that leads to good performances on a cricket field. The appointment of a coach is merely a good choice that comes out of a stable administration. In the absence of that it would be hoping for too much to expect a hero to ride in from nowhere and take Indian cricket to the top. Those messiahs exist only in the movies.