Captaincy call the ‘right thing to do’
Former Black Caps coach Mike Hesson has opened up on the Ross Taylor captaincy axing controversy that blighted his otherwise successful stint guiding New Zealand’s national cricketers.
Hesson revisited the controversial decision to dump Taylor as test skipper after the Sri Lanka tour of 2012 in the latest instalment of Sky Sport’s
The Pod interview series. Hesson spoke about ‘‘snaky’’ elements within the New Zealand side that were looking to play both sides of the great divide between Taylor and Hesson’s choice of successor, Brendon McCullum, but said he had ‘‘no regrets’’ over a call that saw him cop his share of the fallout.
‘‘It was definitely the toughest time of my coaching career,’’ Hesson told Ian Smith during an hour-long discussion covering his career in the sport.
‘‘I keep going back to the reasons why I coach and many times I ask myself at night – am I making the decision for the right reasons . . . because I think it’s going to make the team better?
‘‘I have a lot of empathy for what Ross went through and it was a really difficult time for the whole team.
‘‘And we also had people within the environment being a little bit snaky around it as well in terms of trying to play both sides.
‘‘It was a really untidy time. But I don’t regret the decision, [though] I certainly regret the fallout from it and the way people felt throughout it. I still think it was the right decision. Could it have been done better? Of course it could have.’’
Hesson also revealed the extent of the fallout he copped in Dunedin from a clearly divided cricketing public.
‘‘I had hate mail put in the door. I had faeces put on my front door at my house,’’ he told Smith.
‘‘It was a pretty horrible time and all I was trying to do was what I thought was right for the cricket team at the time.
‘‘There were a number of people who didn’t know many facts, who didn’t know either Ross or myself, who were very opinionated about things . . . It was what I felt we needed to do to move the team forward.’’ As Hesson told Smith on The
Pod, New Zealand were ranked eighth, eighth, and ninth in the three disciplines at the time and
‘‘our record over the previous two years had been dreadful’’.
He admitted the timing of the decision had been compromised a little by the Black Caps coming off a test victory over Sri Lanka in which Taylor had ‘‘played like a genius’’.
On McCullum, who went on to lead the Black Caps through an outstanding period of achievement in all forms of the game, Hesson said: ‘‘We saw him as a cool, calm head . . . he certainly wouldn’t let the game drift and would be quite proactive in terms of his approach.
‘‘He was also able to get that ‘follow-me’ mentality. ‘Hey, this is the vision I’ve got, this is the way I want us to play, and we might have some bad days along the way, but we’re going to back you and play a style of cricket that we think reflects the way we want to play.’
‘‘I thought he was the only person at the time that could have done that with the group of players we had.’’
Hesson also relived the captivating 2015 ODI World Cup campaign in New Zealand and Australia where the Black Caps made their first ever final during a memorable run and his decision to ultimately step away from the job a year before the next global event in England in
2019.
‘‘It was far from easy,’’ he said of his decision to stand down from the coaching role in
2018.
But spending upwards of 10 1 ⁄2 months a year on the road persuaded him he needed to spend more time with his wife and children.
‘‘I had a really supportive wife who was very understanding and I had two young kids and had come to a point in time where you have to go ‘enough is enough, they’ve sacrificed enough’.
‘‘I’d run out of gas and certainly my family felt I should be at home more – and rightfully so.’’
‘‘I don’t regret the decision, [though] I certainly regret the fallout from it and the way people felt throughout it.’’
Mike Hesson on the decision to strip Ross Taylor of the Black Caps captaincy