Itchy feet and Xmas presents – Bracewell can't wait
It has only taken a couple of weeks in the job, but John Bracewell, the new Black Caps coach, has admitted to having itchy feet to get into his job when the New Zealanders return from their tour of India and Pakistan next month.So far he has been watching and selecting with an almost detached view, far removed from the emotion of the action. But after six years as chief selector at Gloucestershire, he knows there is an emotional attachment coming.”I see things slightly differently at the moment, but that will change when I am more involved,” he said.Bracewell, who left for England, just after New Zealand Cricket had adopted the Hood Report, said the scene had changed enormously in that time. “I heard the rumours around England that New Zealand had really got their act together. When I first went over there, they had the administration structure, including the administrators, and the coaching underway to the point it was leading edge. But now there is a trail of English coaches coming out here to the High Performance Centre to take in what is being done.”It is an evolutionary thing. New Zealand Cricket has been very lucky to have the right people in the right place at the right time. Initially, it was John Howell coming into the coaching role when there was no structure at all. But he made people feel wanted in coaching. He was a tremendous host, you would come to Christchurch for a meeting and you always went home with a buzz that what you were doing was appreciated.”Christopher Doig injected energy into the administration and brought John Graham in to sort out administrative matters with the team. The time has been tremendous, hopefully to this point,” he said, acknowledging that in many ways the flame of innovation and performance has been passed to him.”He has been increasingly informed with where NZC is at in its development. As soon as he applied for the job, information was made available to him, something he felt was probably aimed at ensuring he was in a reasonable position to answer questions when interviewed.Asked as a former spinner what he might be able to do about the dearth of spinners in New Zealand, his answer was typically Bracewellian – “The biggest issue is the captaincy situation.From what observations he has taken from 10 days of the annual pre-season matches at the Academy he said all captaincy had been done by remote control and spin bowlers couldn’t develop in that situation. “They lack self confidence because they lack self belief. Spinners must operate with the support of their captains,” he said.Bracewell had been impressed with the potential of spinners he has seen, but not with their treatment. “I have been impressed with the bowling talent, the athleticism of the players and the wicketkeeping talent.” The batsmen had been guilty of not adjusting to the conditions as quickly as they should have and they were approaching batting on the first day as if they were on the second, third or fourth day pitches.Bracewell cast his mind back to his own introduction to first-class cricket when his spin bowling was immature, something that had developed because he couldn’t bowl fast. He dabbled in spin-bowling at school when like most 1st XI’s his side lacked bowling depth and he used to pick up Brendon’s, his fast-bowler brother, scraps.”I spun it a lot without controlling it. Getting the ball to spin as much as I could was my total enjoyment in bowling,” he said.The change came when Bracewell went south to Dunedin to play rugby, and to try and get a place at Teacher’s College. “All I ever wanted to be was a teacher, I never had any other career in mind.”But in the meantime, he came to the attention of the Otago cricket selectors and it was the combined influence of Warren Lees, the wicketkeeping captain, and Stephen Boock, the left-arm spinner, that Bracewell’s own spin-bowling career took off. There was some fine tuning to be done, in fact, if it had been a television set the fine tuning knob would have taken more than a few twists to get it right.Bracewell credited Lees with being the finest manipulator of a game that he knew. And it all came down to the use of time left in a game, not the time to score runs, but the time required to bowl the number of overs to get the opposition out. And the best way to do that was to utilise the number of overs spin bowlers could send down in a given time. In the three-day cricket of that time that ability was vital, whereas nowadays with four days in which to play, captains were running out of time because they didn’t understand what they were trying to achieve. It had been an era in which there were a number of good spinners on the New Zealand first-class scene.And, consistently, the hardest of them all to keep out was Boock, now serving on the board of NZC. “Stephen Boock was a mean son of a bitch. His attitude to the batsman was, ‘You are not going to score a run off me.’ He was very hard on me. He would come up to me and say, ‘Our job is to keep this guy on 0 as long as possible. That’s how we will get him out.’ I wanted to rip the ball past him first ball but it was a discipline to have. Lees had Boock and Lance Cairns to keep it tight. I would give away a couple of fours an over, but because Boocky was not giving any runs away, the opposition were only scoring four an over.”The only captains he thought had this quality of understanding in England were Adam Hollioake, the Surrey captain, in the four-day game and Mark Alleyne in the one-day game for Gloucestershire.Reflecting on the possible Bracewell coaching style and how it would be seen by the New Zealand public, he said the team was entitled to due respect for its performances in Test cricket. The two-Test introduction the home series against Pakistan would be a useful opener for him to observe the chemistry of the team he has inherited.That would be the entrée to the main course as perceived by most with an interest in the New Zealand game, adressing the inconsistencies of the one-day side, during a five-match series with Pakistan and a six-match series at the start of the South African tour. He had no fears about making the changes required for greater ODI consistency. An overhaul was required in the team approach.He has watched New Zealand’s one-day performances in India from a distanceas he has seen the same frustrations as everyone else. But there was not only the inconsistency of performances, but the inconsistencies within performances.The answer would not be a quick fix. There would be a period of observation before the changes were felt. Obviously, he said, the New Zealanders were athletes, even their biggest players were athletic, which was in marked contrast to the Andrew Caddicks’ and Ashley Giles’ of the England team.”The New Zealanders are athletic. We are lucky that they have chosen cricket. Normally, we get second choice athletes, that’s what we were in the 1980s. Basically, we were players who weren’t good enough at our favourite sport, so we opted for cricket. We all came from the 1st XV-1st XI upbringing. It was probably Chris Cairns who first had to make the choice between the two. Cairns and Jeff Wilson both had to choose, and they went in different directions.”He has four years, the same time as yesterday’s strategic plan for the game in New Zealand. The timing is not without coincidence. Improving the one-day game has to be addressed now if the side is to perform to capacity in the West Indies in 2007.Bracewell has asked questions of himself about whether he is ready for the role? Whether his time away from New Zealand has prepared him sufficiently and whether he is good enough to do the job? And the answer?It’s probably best outlined in his description of having “the Christmas feeling”. The presents are all under the tree, but it is not December 25, and he can’t open them yet.