Different coaches for Tests and ODIs

In a write up earlier this week, Tim de Lisle suggested England to get a new coach for their one-day team and keep Fletcher for test squad. I think it’s a brilliant thought which might well be the case in future. From the times of same teams playing all matches we now have seen specialist players and even different captains for different forms of the game. So why not coaches?

Already international teams are looking to have specialist coaches. England proved last summer how important it was to have Troy Cooley as assistant bowling coach during their Ashes winning campaign. So much so that even Australians had to look beyond much successful John Buchanan and steal Cooley from English to help their bowlers. Pakistan just recently purchased services of great Jonty Rhodes for some fielding lessons to the likes of Inzamam-ul-Haq. India got Australian bowler Bruce Reid to help their pace attack on 2003-04 Australian tour and his efforts were much appreciated. And not to underestimate how past greats have been helping present generations voluntarily for ages.

Today teams have specialized support of fitness trainers, physiotherapists, computer analysts, sports psychologists and what not. It will be ignorant to dismiss different forms of the game not being strategically different. It’s still cricket, calls will always be made but the fact is strategies and planning can’t be exactly same for different versions of the game. May be there are individuals out there who understand a particular form lot better than the other.

It’s worth trying and interesting to see who will take the lead if any? The scheduling of international programs has made it practically possible now. No longer are ODIs and test matches intervened. In 80s and a for a good part of 90s it was all too common for teams to start with 2 one-dayers, then play a test, play another one-dayer, play 2 tests and come back to finish final few one-dayers. Annual tri series in Australia used to be played on either side of test series. New Zealand and Zimbabwe even played an ODI in the middle of a test match in November 1992 in Harare. All this switching from one form to another would have made it impossible to have separate coaches for one day team and test team. Now with one day and test segments of a tour are played after one another and ‘specialist’ players are flying in/out for their segments, different coaches can be tried out.

Will we see anything like that in next few years?