| IS
JOHN BUCHANAN A TECH-ENABLED PROVOCATIVE, PROACTIVE
COACH AHEAD OF HIS TIMES OR IS HE JUST A CURMUDGEON
WITH HARE-BRAINED THEORIES? POST THE KKR DEBACLE
IN THE IPL II, THE DEBATE HAS JUST GOT MORE INTENSE.
 At
his best John Buchanan is a man reputed to pull
players out of their comfort zone; a ruthlessly
honest outsider in the V S Naipaul mould and one
who is provocative, proactive and ahead of the times.
He has been credited with keeping an incredibly
talented Australian team from getting complacent.
Under him Australia evoked the Invincibles and under
him Queensland went from being no-hopers to a champion
side in 1994-95, their first-ever Sheffield Shield
title. At his worst Buchanan is ‘Bhookha Nan’,
who has, with his multiple-captain theory and other
such indiscretions in the IPL II, earned the ridicule
of cricket lovers and is, so goes the consensus,
the man responsible for turning the most glamourous
side in the IPL into a laughing stock. As far back
as 1998 Middlesex blamed him for over-complicating
a simple game when the county slipped to 17th position,
the lowest in their history.
People
who snigger at the 56-year-old coach will tell you
how Buchanan, a former teacher, has often transmogrified
into an eccentric who forced his players to go for
‘boot camps’ (former Aussie spinner
Stuart MacGill got injured in one of them) and often
treats international players as school students.
He questioned Shane Warne’s fitness in the
press, as opposed to talking directly to the leg
spinner, and once slipped in angry notes under players’
room doors (these were, then, sadly, discovered
by the press). During Australia’s 2001 Ashes
tour, he put together a dossier that extolled the
virtues of fifth-century Chinese warrior and philosopher
Sun Tzu. He wanted the team to draw parallels with
Tzu’s interpretations of situations such as
“dispersive ground”, “contentious
ground” and “ground of intersecting
highway”. The team management misplaced it,
and it provided the Englishmen their only source
of laughter during the Ashes. “We were relieved
that the media got hold of the memo so they could
translate it for us,” Steve Waugh wrote of
the document. (In fact, in a recent interview, Buchanan
rated The Art of War by the Chinese military genius
as his all-time favourite. “I think this book
was written to describe Twenty20 cricket,”
he added.)
So just what do we make of Buchanan? A number-crunching,
tech-enabled savant misunderstood by a majority
of people or, as Sunil Gavaskar recently said, a
“failed former cricketer making a living telling
international players to do what he couldn't do”?
As it usually happens, the truth lies somewhere
in between. To dismiss Buchanan as some shaggy-haired
scientist living in an imaginary world would be
just as off the mark as it would be to overly credit
him for Australia’s most recent golden run.
Buchanan virtually confessed to the latter when
he recently said he wanted more foreign players
in an IPL side. Perhaps he had become used to functioning
with the Warnes, the McGraths, the Haydens, the
Pontings, and now the Dindas and the Sahas didn’t
excite him much. The results showed as much —
of all the IPL teams the Kolkata Knight Riders got
the least out of their domestic players.
There can be merit in his maverick ideas, provided
there is a strong captain who trusts him and acts
like an alert filter at the same time. The IPL II,
perhaps, was the first time that the players pulled
him out of his comfort zone. He didn’t know
them well before he joined the Knight Riders. He
would spend only a few weeks with them, and he would
commit the same mistake with Sourav Ganguly as he
did with Warne years ago. Just like picking on Warne,
he chose the wrong battle this time. Let’s
just get the Ganguly issue out of the way, objectively,
and because it often happens with Ganguly, without
letting emotion come in. It is perfectly fair to
think and want Ganguly out of a Twenty20 team —
he is pushing 37, doesn’t dive in the field,
doesn’t run well, has been out of competitive
cricket since he retired from Tests last year, and
all that stuff. But you mess with Ganguly only when
you have a better substitute. Greg Chappell learnt
it the hard way.
Once you took away the captaincy from Ganguly, there
was no way you could have him playing. Because in
the whole 200-people squad (it felt like that at
the start of the tournament) Kolkata had, there
was no better captain than Ganguly (Chris Gayle,
the only candidate, wasn’t available through
the season). The performance of the ageing southpaw
of course proved that they didn’t have better
Indian batsmen either, batsmen who could also win
you games with the part-time military mediums.
But Ganguly played, standing behind Brendon McCullum,
a perfectly likable character, a batsman made to
order for Twenty20, a wicketkeeper better than many
going around right now, but not a proven captain.
When McCullum walked in, he had no time to know
his players well. More importantly, he had no time
to get on the same page with Buchanan, who had asserted
himself so much he had become the face of the team.
He had no time to discuss, argue and, if need be,
rubbish Buchanan’s various theories, as did
Waugh when told of the multiple-captaincy theory
during his association with Buchanan. Add to it
the major pressure on McCullum for having replaced
Ganguly — in a Kolkata team no less —
and the fact that his batting form had deserted
him.
The biggest gripe the likes of Warne have had with
Buchanan is that he takes out spontaneity from what
is essentially a captain’s game. With McCullum
not in complete charge, not in the form to be able
to demand performance from his players, captaincy
by committee became the norm. It manifested itself
during the Super Over against Rajasthan Royals.
Warne was clear in his mind that Kamran Khan was
always going to bowl the tiebreaker over. He put
an arm around him, showed total faith in the bowler.
Contrast that with Ajantha Mendis, who was chosen
to bowl after a long debate and at least one of
the team — Ganguly — was not happy.
What frame of mind could Mendis have been in then?
Especially when the management had not shown any
faith in him for the first three matches. The confidence
and clarity of thought that Kamran carried into
that over proved to be the difference.
That Buchanan brought his worst to Kolkata showed
in the team selections. Charl Langeveldt, one of
the best South African bowlers at the death, and
Mashrafe Mortaza, bought for a whopping $600,000,
didn’t get even one of their first 11 games,
nine of which Kolkata lost. Moises Henriques, known
as Matthew Mott’s prodigy inside the team,
got four. It didn’t help that Mott, Buchanan’s
assistant, and several other assistants, looked
after most of the direct matters. So there was a
level between Buchanan and players’ grievances.
In a way the team atmosphere was comparable to the
one that prevailed in India’s national side
during Chappell’s time as coach.
The insecurity ran through KKR’s Indian players,
most of whom never got a decent run, some of whom
are bound to compare the chances they got with what
McCullum got. Therein lay Buchanan’s biggest
failure in the IPL II. Not that the other teams
have big superstars from domestic cricket, but Kolkata
seem to have given up on them early. They have tried
to suck the maximum out of their overseas players,
looking to play bits-and-pieces players as opposed
to specialist bowlers. Mendis has been the only
specialist foreign bowler tried by them, and only
for three games.
Buchanan believes in, and has the conviction to
put in practice, the theory that Twenty20 is closer
to football, that it is too different from the conventional
forms of the game and needs a completely new mindset.
And hence, the coaches’ extra involvement
with the Kolkata team. But in two seasons good authoritative
captains like Warne and M S Dhoni have shown the
captain is still in charge. The Rajasthan and Chennai
players know who to put their faith in; the Kolkata
players are divided between McCullum, Buchanan,
Mott, and even Ganguly.
That Buchanan is capable of looking at the game
with dispassion can be a hope for KKR. If he is
as ruthlessly honest with himself as he is known
to be with his players, Buchanan will see most of
the confusion and frustration with Kolkata stems
from either his vision or the implementation thereof.
Time to sign a note to self and slip it under the
door before entering the hotel room?
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