Derbyshire: A dissenting voice and wonderful memories

Of all the many comments and mails I have received in the past few days, almost all have been in support of the new coaching set up at Derbyshire.

Apart from a couple, the most recent being last night. And it was from…guess who..? Anon.

“Why on earth do we need a wicket-keeping coach for two top quality keepers, who are both better than the new guy. Total waste of money”.

I’m assuming that the pun on new ‘guy’ was unintentional and I didn’t know whether to laugh or shake my head. So, what my perennial friend Anon is saying is that coaches have to be better players than the people they are coaching. A bold, but somewhat naive assertion methinks.

Here’s a test for you. Go through the current county set up and the coaches of each. Were the men in charge better players than those currently under them? In most cases, the answer is a resounding no. They were good, don’t get me wrong, but to suggest that in most cases they shone like beacons in their playing days is fanciful at best, crass at worst.

What most, if not all of them have is the ability to spot flaws in others, help them to eradicate them and become better players. They are generally good at man management – or need to be – and be au fait with technical changes and improvements in the game. There’s better players at Durham than Jon Lewis was, or Geoff Cook for that matter, but without their guiding hand, their attention to detail and their technical knowledge, it is unlikely the silverware would have ended up in the north-east last summer. The same goes for Northamptonshire’s David Ripley, a solid wicket-keeper batsman and no more than that, but a man who steered them to the T20 trophy last year. Mike Atherton or Alec Stewart don’t have that on their CV…

To suggest or suppose any manager has to be better than the people under him is a somewhat facile argument that simply doesn’t hold up. If you take the case of Simon Guy, he was a solid keeper who  lost out through being at the back of a queue of  good ones at Yorkshire, most of who were better batsmen. He has become a very well respected coach and his knowledge of the wicket-keeping art has allowed him to give back to the game by passing it on to others. His ability to do so was recognised by the ECB, where you don’t generally get taken on if you’re not up to the task.

Yes, Tom Poynton and Richard Johnson are good keepers. They may or may not be better than Guy was – though let us not forget that all players have bad days – but their need for specialist coaching remains considerable. If you were training an electrician, you wouldn’t necessarily ask a joiner to do it on the basis that he also used tools. Likewise, the need for specialist support is paramount for the greatest of cricketing specialisms. Most can be an adequate stopper, but there’s much more to the art than that. There is, after all, only one in a team and that man can make or break a fielding side.

Nor is Simon Guy’s remit with those two alone. There are the younger lads coming through, but he will also be involved in specialist clinics for talented young keepers around the county, showing them the best methods. Only last week on the Big Bash, the commentator’s were showing how a young Aussie keeper missed out on a run out by not following modern thinking when a throw comes in. He was behind the stumps, always the way we were shown at school, when in fact the current thinking is that by being just in front, taking the ball early and drawing your hand back to the stumps (with the ball in it, of course) you can save a fraction of a second that sometimes makes all the difference.

Beyond doubt Simon Guy will improve Poynton and Johnson and will be able to give them more time than Karl Krikken could ever afford. Yet his greatest contribution may well be in discovering their successors, instilling good habits and training methods and watching them for any slight errors creeping in. How Lee Goddard would have benefited from that, when his glove work went awry…

Finally tonight, thanks again to Jeff for a tip on the Somerset v Rothmans Cavaliers game at Taunton in 1967, which you can see over on Youtube. It brought back great memories for me, when Sunday afternoons were spent in front of the TV when there was no match on, watching the stars of the day. As is patently obvious from the footage of the great Garfield Sobers bowling, the stars didn’t put all that much in to it, but were generally good enough for the county sides they faced.

The footage is grainy, but shows the great talent of Hampshire’s West Indian Roy Marshall, spraying sixes over extra cover, a rare shot of the time. There’s also the quick feet of Australian Bobby Simpson, while the majesty of the Sobers cover drive near the end was worth watching alone.

All that with pealing church bells in the background and even a chance to see some bucolic swings from subsequent Derbyshire favourite, Fred Rumsey. In a sign of how the game has changed, Fred, never the most lithe of movers, is nonetheless good enough to get under a couple of huge hits to hold them with a degree of elan at deep mid-on. The position is now reserved for the best fielder in the side, the fleet of foot and highly athletic with capacious hands.

Fred was good, but his best mate would never have called him that.

Great memories though and I hope you enjoy the eighteen minutes – with Elysian commentary from John Arlott – as much as I did.

Thanks again Jeff!