It has always surprised me just how wide of the mark the public and the press can be in their opinions on players' personalities. In my experience popular perceptions are wildly wrong in six or seven cases out of every 11. You just cannot judge the true character of a player until you have seen how he reacts in the changing room after he has been under pressure in the middle. As often as not, the man who is seen as happy-go-lucky and thought to be a positive influence on the field can be a real downer behind the scenes and vice versa.
Michael Atherton would be a classic example. He was nicknamed Captain Grumpy by the press when he was playing, but in the changing room I hardly ever saw him in a miserable state of mind. He could be quiet but he was always quick to make a funny little comment to help cut through the stress of a situation.
This is why I would hesitate before making judgments about Stuart Broad on the back of his behaviour in the last Test, when he threw the ball at Zulqarnain Haider in his follow through. Broad was responding to frustration, not pressure. They are completely different things. I do not think England were ever under great pressure in that match because Pakistan never threatened to set them a large enough target to cause real trouble in the fourth innings. England simply thought the game was going to be a lot easier to win than it turned out to be once Pakistan's lower order started battling back. It would be wrong to make judgments about Broad's character as a cricketer off the back of a minor incident like that one.
There is no doubt he was in the wrong. He made two mistakes. Firstly, it was clear he had no intention of hitting the stumps with his throw. Secondly, he reacted badly. He should have said sorry sincerely. Instead he offered only a cursory apology, as though he felt it was just a necessary gesture he had to make. As a coach I do not think the situation calls for anything other than a quick, quiet chat with him, over breakfast or at one side of the next net session. You do not need to call a meeting or take a headmaster's approach, lecturing the player about how you never want to see them doing that kind of thing again. These are grown people after all.
The best tactic is often just to ask the player what they think about it themselves. Most times you will not even have to say anything else because they will already know they have overstepped the mark. If he happens to feel he has not done anything wrong, then you might just remind him that he is not being judged solely as an individual, but as an England player. As a result the rest of the team are also being judged by his behaviour. Is that right? Are they going to be happy about that?
Last week I was talking about the critical mass of the side. This is another area where it can be difficult to form judgments from outside the dressing room. When I talk about critical mass I mean that the team has to have a positive balance of personalities between players who are naturally a little bit lazier, weaker or more disruptive and those who try hard and handle the pressure well. A successful XI needs a ratio of at least eight to three against the more difficult types. Looking at this England team I think their critical mass is almost 11 out of 11. You run through them from one to 11 and they do not seem to have a single character in there who might crumble. But then in the cases of some of those players I am judging them from outside the dressing room and, as I have said, that can be deceptive.
Still, they look to have a common goal, with everyone pulling in the same direction. That does not automatically make them the best England team I have seen – I still think that the side which included Simon Jones and Andrew Flintoff had a much better bowling attack than the current outfit. But they do have a lot of strong characters in the side who are ready for a fight. You could feel that on the fourth day when they were chasing 118. They were always going to get there, but there was a question of how much trouble they would have doing it. But from Andrew Strauss and Jonathan Trott down through that middle order of Kevin Pietersen, Paul Collingwood and Eoin Morgan, it felt as though this was not a group who were going to get the jitters going after a small total. Character-wise they are close to being the best squad of players I have seen since I got involved with English cricket back in 1997, even allowing for Broad's occasional petulance.
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