Wasim Akram, always deliciously outspoken, thinks “bowlers nowadays are pure lazy and are happy with whatever they are being given on a platter”. It is a telling remark, not just because it comes from a great bowler but because Akram spent his formative years before the era of mushrooming specialist coaches. I read this comment just a day before I read of how the return to effectiveness of Mitchell Johnson would be a test for Troy Cooley, the Australian fast bowling coach; or indeed that Cooley’s reputation would depend on it. The two comments are related. If bowlers are handed everything on a platter, as Akram says, they will stop being able to think for themselves and to solve their own problems. They would use coaches as crutches and in doing so retard their own development. A similar, equally valid, argument has been put forward about pampered young men and women and their inability to face the real, and often cruel, world.

There is only that much Cooley can do for Johnson for the bowler has to fire the gun himself. Damien Fleming, another whose company I have enjoyed greatly in a commentary box, is spot on when he says, “The problem is you can’t perform for the players on the field, you can only prepare them, and my big worry with Mitch is that when it’s going badly he doesn’t seem to be able to coach himself on the field to get himself back into the battle.”. The more players are spoon fed the more they will find themselves unable to coach themselves. In fact, later in that interview, Akram says, “The use of technology is good but it shouldn’t stop the bowler from using his own mind”.

... contd.