Chris Waters: Let’s get the Australian coach to drive us all away to pixie land

Both took a dim view of the sometimes overbearing nature of modern coaching, which has been known to range from the mildly autocratic to the downright despotic.

Warne memorably described ex-Australia coach Buchanan as a “goose” who lives in “pixie land” and accused him of suffering from “verbal diarrhoea”.

Kevin Pietersen, whom Buchanan once labelled a weak link in the England side, branded Buchanan “a nobody” and added that anyone could have coached the great Australian team of Warne et al.

The thorny issue of coaching was once again thrust into the spotlight after Australia dropped four players for the third Test in India, a decision that you can be sure will be dragged up again and again during the build-up to this summer’s Ashes.

As you will doubtless be aware, vice-captain Shane Watson, pictured, pace bowlers James Pattinson and Mitchell Johnson, plus batsman Usman Khawaja, were axed for failing to deliver a presentation – either by email or in person – to coach Mickey Arthur on how the team could improve after defeats in the opening two Tests in India.

“I wanted three points from each of the players technically, mentally and as a team as to how we were going to get ourselves back into the series,” explained Arthur. “Unfortunately, four players didn’t comply with that.”

Although Arthur’s actions were widely condemned, with Warne, for one, branding them “ridiculous”, the first thing to say is that he was technically within his rights.

The decision – taken with the full support of captain Michael Clarke and Cricket Australia – was a response to four players failing to comply with an explicit command.

It does not actually matter a can of ‘XXXX’ whether you agree or not with Arthur’s three-point plan.

What is beyond question is that a clear managerial instruction was disobeyed by two players in Watson and Pattinson, who failed to complete the task in time (they were given five days) and by another two in Johnson and Khawaja, who simply forgot.

The ridiculous aspect to this reverberating saga essentially relates to two key points.

First, the severity of a punishment that was designed to reflect, in Arthur’s words, that “the best teams have the best attitudes and best behaviour patterns and a good, hard, ruthless culture” and, second, that such a three-point plan was deemed necessary in the first place.

The four players in question might be fine cricketers, but they are cricketers for a reason – ie, they are good at cricket rather than skilled at filling in forms and making presentations.

If Arthur wanted plans and blueprints, policies and bullet points, he should have looked for a job in strategic marketing.

What particularly irks here, and what must have really irritated the four players concerned, is the question of what they were supposed to have written anyway, beyond the obvious that they 1) need to bat better, 2) bowl better and 3) field better.

This theme was taken up on Twitter by a bloke called Ramesh Srivats of Bangalore, who tweeted to his 96,000-plus followers three ways to improve the performance of the side as Arthur had suggested.

Mr Srivats, who describes himself as “an armchair thinker, excessive drinker, (and) occasional writer, (who) wants to be lighter”, pitched his thoughts so perfectly they were the equivalent of a 90mph outswinger that starts outside leg stump and clips the top of off.

His three-point plan was as follows:

Work towards customer delight through the synergistic application of resources.

Add value to all stakeholders by inculcating a culture of innovation.

Create a paradigm-shifting workplace that holistically enables productivity.

Brilliant, Mr Srivats, brilliant.

If Arthur’s three-point plan told us anything, it is that job-justification has gone off the scale and that cricket now is win-at-all-costs.

The No 1 priority is not about entertaining spectators; if it was, Australia would not have axed four of their best players for such a piffling offence.

Rather, it is about coaches like Arthur trying to justify their positions by creating an environment in which fun and enjoyment are secondary factors.

As the man himself pointed out, as though parroting from some sort of psychobabble handbook: “This is a line-in-the-sand moment for us as a unit in our quest to become the best in the world. We’ll look back on it in a couple of years’ time when we’re back to No 1 in the world and say it was a defining moment.

“We want to be the Spanish football team, Manchester United or McLaren of world cricket, where high standards are not expected, they are second nature.

“The message that it sends to all involved in Australian cricket is that we are pretty serious about where we want to take this team.”

In reality, the message that it sends is that cricket – essentially a simple contest between bat and ball – has become as overly-complicated as everything else in life these days.

Whether you are playing Test cricket for your country, or, on a more mundane level, simply trying to pay a utility bill, it seems that everything now has to be subject to endless paperwork and sundry frustrations.

The best coaches, in fact, are not just coaches but man-managers who know how to handle different individuals.

Why, it may be an entirely different sport and a different era, but could you imagine former Nottingham Forest manager Brian Clough asking his players to submit a three-point plan after a couple of defeats?

Clough would have simply demanded a good night out.

Of course, it is easy to be flippant about coaches and coaching.

Done properly, coaching is an important and invaluable tool.

Done badly, however, and it is divisive, demotivating and ultimately destructive.

Shane Watson said that Arthur’s decision left him unsure whether he wanted to keep playing Test cricket at all.

If that’s good coaching, then we’re better off living in pixie land.