Australia can't waste talent like India: Greg Chappell

[Chandan]

LINK Australia can't waste talent like India: Greg Chappell ESPNcricinfo staff 14 April 2011 Greg Chappell, Cricket Australia's national talent manager, has said, on returning from a "reconnaissance exercise" to the US, that Australia do not have as large a talent pool for cricket as some other countries, and hence have to be careful not to waste any of the talent they have. He said the key for Australian cricket was giving young players enough opportunities so they develop mental strength early. Chappell and four other Cricket Australia officials had visited the US to study the functioning of two American teams - the Boston Red Sox and the University of Texas football team - and explore, among other things, the way they identified and nurtured talented players. "We're not like India, we can't waste talent," Chappell told the Sydney Morning Herald. "They can have a few fall over and there will be someone there backing them up, but we don't have the talent pool they have, so we have to be a lot more efficient. "You might have ten players at the end of the under-19 programme, but we need to get the majority of those guys through to the next level. How does a player develop mental toughness? You develop mental toughness in the heat of the battle; nobody has come up with any other way. "That means we have to work with the states to make sure that if we have identified these players, they get opportunities in all formats over the next few years, which can sometimes counter what the state thinks is important for them." The Test team, he said, could use the services of the three senior statesmen, Ricky Ponting, Michael Hussey and Simon Katich, but only so long as their selection remains "viable", with them scoring runs and guiding the transitional team. "They are mature cricketers, they know what the landscape is and that they can't play forever. As long as they can bring something to the table, not only the runs or wickets, but the input they can have with the group, they are viable. "We've got a new captain (Michael Clarke). Change isn't just about personnel, it's about attitude and intent and about tactics, and I'm sure Michael will bring different thought processes to the captaincy. That is a positive thing. I don't think we need to make wholesale changes to see regeneration within the team." Shane Watson, Australia's new vice-captain, should remain in the opener's slot, Chappell said. "We need players who are going to help us win games, and Shane Watson opening the batting can help us win games. His bowling also gives the flexibility to play an extra spinner in Sri Lanka or an extra pace bowler in South Africa." Chappell, who took over Australia's captaincy from elder brother Ian in the '70s and then had his sibling play under him, said Clarke and Ponting should be able work around the rather awkward scenario of a team containing its former leader. "The one that is stepping down has to be conscious of the fact he is no longer in charge. I was fortunate [with Ian], I leaned on his experience and I am sure there were times when he had to bite his tongue and wait for me to either ask questions or wake up. I am sure there will be such times for Michael and Ricky as well, but they will work it out." ------------------------------------------------- Whatever he is saying might have some truth in it, but why did he name India and said that India was wasting talent? Which talent have we wasted and how? More importantly, which talent was he referring to? Is it Irfan? Still I don't undertand why you need to drag India in while planning for the efficiency of your own system!

[Roshanrocks]

^ He was referring to himself as a talent India wasted :hehe:

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[panesarv]

:hysterical: WTF

[Chandan]

Looks like Australia has gone in a denial too and has entered into a never ending transition phase since its legends retired. Why are the international class talents not emerging from even that small but battle hardened talent pool? Where has their sysyem gone wrong?

[ganeshran]

He is wrong, we dont have lots of bowling reserve talent.. we only have a strong batting pool

[achilles]

This is purely retarded. Choice of words is horrendous. And maybe its time we reform our views about the so-called "Strongest Domestic Structure in the World" that Australia boasts so shamelessly about.

[Stuge]

This statement proves how STUPID he is :WTF:

[Switchblade]

:fail::fail::fail::fail::fail::fail:

[NareshK]

He is wrong' date=' we dont have lots of bowling reserve talent.. we only have a strong batting pool[/quote'] The pace bowling department is a little weak but its also improving with the likes of Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Manpreet Gony, Varun Aaron etc. getting better. But the pitches in India are usually very slow and flat and dont offer any bounce or seam movement. Usually the fast bowlers up front will bowl three or four overs just to get the ball soft and will be replaced by spinners who will bowl throughout the day. You cant expect India to have a large pace bowling pool till the nature of pitches change drastically just like Australia cant produce spinners.

[Prakat]

Don't know what he's talking about now. The one thing that has stood out about the Aussies is their bench strength. Whenever one regular was injured or missed a series there was always someone to replace him. They are the only team in the world that leaves out a proven match-winner from the squad even if he had a few more quality years in order to bring in an upcoming talent with an eye to the future. The comment about the talent reserves in India looks like a compliment though. :)

[ganeshran]

The pace bowling department is a little weak but its also improving with the likes of Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Manpreet Gony, Varun Aaron etc. getting better. But the pitches in India are usually very slow and flat and dont offer any bounce or seam movement. Usually the fast bowlers up front will bowl three or four overs just to get the ball soft and will be replaced by spinners who will bowl throughout the day. You cant expect India to have a large pace bowling pool till the nature of pitches change drastically just like Australia cant produce spinners.

ya , this IPL is certainly better though, we have had some nice seaming pitches with good movement... I heard an aussie is the curator for one of the grounds

[Chandan]

link Australia - in neverending transition Marco Trevisiol | 14 Apr 2011 In the aftermath of their recent WC defeat, there have been common phrases and words uttered about where Australian cricket is at. The most significant one is the phrase that the Australian side is 'in transition'. This perspective and its connotations are worthy of further examination as they help shed light on why Australian cricket is in the state it's in. This phrase basically implies that after so many great Australian players retired in the 2006-08 period, it would be a challenging period where faith would have to be placed in raw, younger talent and patience would have to be shown before Australia could hope to have another great era like the 1995-2007 period. In theory this means that after 2-3 years of being in 'transition', Australia should be fielding an improving side comprised largely of young, developing players that are starting to gain self-belief required to be top-class cricketers, backed up by a handful of older players providing stability and leadership. However, the reality is far different from that. A good way to illustrate this is to compare the side Australia fielded during its 2007 WC triumph - considered at the time to be the closing chapter on a great era of Australian cricket - with the 2011 WC side. Below is the side Australia fielded in the 2007 final (along with their respective ages at the time of the match), followed by the 2011 side that got knocked out in the quarter-final: 2007 WC final side - Gilchrist (35), Hayden (35), Ponting (32), Symonds (31), Watson (25), Clarke (26), M Hussey (31), Hogg (36), Bracken (29), Tait (24), McGrath (37). 2011 WC quarter-final side - Watson (29), Haddin (33), Ponting (36), Clarke (29), M Hussey (35), White (27), D Hussey (33), Johnson (29), Lee (34), Krejza (28), Tait (28) The combined age of both sides is exactly the same, which is damning on a side supposedly in transition for several years. And while the 2007 side had more one-day international games experience than the 2011 version, the 2011 version had a more even spread of experience, with 8 players having played more than 75 games, compared with 6 from the 2007 version. And this trend has been reflected in Australia's recent Test lineups. For the opening Test of the Ashes this summer, 5 of Australia's top 7 were 30 years or older (with several in their mid-30s). The biggest disappointment about the Australian side in the last 2-3 years hasn't been their decline in performance (which was inevitable to an extent) but their unwillingness to take the plunge on a new generation of players. On almost every occasion in that period when confronted with a choice between a young and old player, they have gone with the supposedly safer option of the older, more experienced player. One only needs to compare how Phil Hughes and Marcus North have been treated in Tests. After Hughes burst on the scene in the Sheffield Shield while still a teenager with a wealth of runs, the selectors made the bold move of picking him for the difficult challenge of a tour of South Africa when still only 20 years old in early 2009. After a rocky start (a duck on debut) he was a stunning success with twin centuries in just his second Test. It seemed for sure that he was a long-term prospect at international level by which the side could be built around. Yet extraordinarily after just two Tests in the Ashes series that followed he was discarded from the site. Certainly his form had been modest and it appeared that his technique had struggled against the English pace attack, but to dump him after just three innings seemed a very negative and panicky move to make on a significant young talent. It seemed to destabilise his self-belief as his form has been no better than patchy since then. And yet, after a very poor 2010/11 domestic season, he was brought back into the Test side during the home Ashes series! Not surprisingly, he again struggled and his career is now at the crossroads. All up, it seems a classic case of player mismanagement. Then there's left-handed batsman Marcus North. After being a moderately successful performer at domestic level for a decade with Western Australia, the then 29 year-old was picked for the South Africa tour, largely on the basis of the option he provided with his part-time off-spinners. Initially, he performed very well, scoring two centuries in his first 3 Tests. But it soon became apparent there were significant issues with North's technique that were getting regularly exposed at international level, like an excessively high backlift and a weakness against spin. As a result, while he was able to score centuries fairly regularly the rate of single-figure scores he produced was alarmingly high. Remarkably only once in his 21 Test career did he reach double-figures in both innings of a Test. Despite this and the fact that his off-spin was almost a non-factor at Test level, he was persisted with for an excessively lengthy period right up until the 2010/11 Ashes where his failures surprised no one and he was finally omitted. This illustrates the mindset of the selectors and leadership of Australian cricket over the past few years - a lack of faith in young talent that should be the cornerstone of the rebuilding of the side instead of long-term moderate performers because of their experience and their 'bits and pieces' capabilities. The contradiction in Australia's mindset was illustrated in Ricky Ponting's press conference announcing his resignation as captain recently. On one hand he stated how much he "enjoyed the transitional phase", implying he'd been overseeing the transition from the side of older champions in the first half of his captaincy reign to a young, inexperienced side in the latter stages. Yet when the topic of whether Michael Hussey and Simon Katich (both 36 later this year) should be moved on from the side (along with himself of course), Ponting was emphatic about how essential they were to the side: (from: http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia/content/story/508475.html)

"I think it's important for Australian cricket now that those guys are around," he said. "What I think you don't and you can't afford to ever have in a team is a mass exodus of all those sorts of players at once. "I think we've seen that in the last couple of years when we had all the greats (Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne, Justin Langer) move at one time, it left us very bare and it's been hard for us to rebuild and get it back to where we want to as a result of that. "So I think it's important the selectors take that on board [for] the next little period of time and make sure we don't have myself, Huss, Kato and those guys all leaving together because that would leave some incredibly big holes in the team."

The most obvious response to these comments is: if they're so essential to the success of the side why has the Australian Test side declined to No. 5 in the rankings and is in its weakest state since the 1980s? As well, continuing to have three 35+ year-old batsmen in the side means - even if they do provide some success in the short-term - that they're more likely to depart together in a short space of time, causing more upheaval and instability. By these comments, Ponting seems to have reverted to the mindset that dominated English cricket in the 1990s. Despite being part of mediocre sides, there was general reluctance and fear in investing in young talent. A classic example was England turning to Graham Gooch and Mike Gatting for the 1994/95 Ashes tour when they were both well past their best to handle the rigours of such a challenge. Australia is in a position they haven't been for several decades - not only are they an ordinary side in decline but one that doesn't even have much promising young talent to keep fans hopeful. It's the worst possible situation to be in. It's a major challenge for new captain Michael Clarke to confront, but it's definitely in his interests if he changes the mindset of the latter stages of the Ponting era and sees that keeping faith in a new generation of young players is the only way Australian cricket is going to regenerate themselves. Otherwise, they may be in a state of permanent 'transition'. ----------- Terrific points in this article. What do you say?

[akshayxyz]

Question - does talent pool should necessarily refer to already identified talent? I think it can also refer to loads of unidentified talent also - going by the fact the craze cricket is in a population of India's size.

[Fontaine]

He's right in a way. Instead of allowing guys like Pathan, Ishant etc to mature and develop a few years in domestic cricket, A tours etc the selectors just throw them into the test side full time and expect them to perform instead of allowing them to grow. Some of the bowlers we've had don't even fully understand their own bowling, fitness techniques etc yet they're expected to understand how to get top batsmen out? Doesn't make much sense.

[CoverDrive]

what is his obsession with India

[vipin]

Well he is just probably referring to the numbers, India being such a huge country with lots of people shining through especially in the batting department (particularly in the current IPL).

[Sir_Afridi]

How times have changed http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia/content/story/319712.html

[vvvslaxman]

It's a complement or criticism of INdian cricket.. or bit of both.

[youngindia]

i think people have misintrepreted his comments here.he usually talks in terms of overall population the essence of his comment is australia cannot miss cricketing talent coming out from its smaller talent pool of 20 million than countries like india. the key for a country like australia to be competitive is for its sytem to be most effcient in talent identification and nurturing of its smaller populatin. that's what he is basically driving at. but the dynamics are very different for australia and india.the only country that can stand valid comparison is china and it does n't play cricket. one can argue our system even in cricket currently is nowhere near as efficient as the better sporting countries. but we have still reached top tier status(after 70 years) which coincides with players from smaller towns(dhoni,raina,chawla) starting to make waves. hypothetically we can operate at say 50% efficiency of the australian system and still be competitive with them because of our larger talent pool. if the country with the larger popualtion has the same efficiency as the smaller countries , the smaller country has no chance in hell. it can argued that australia still may have more highly or better trained cricketers than india because its domestic system is so good. but his comments hold true for the long term for sure in any sport if not any field.