Give Gary Stead a break
Gary Stead has made the most brilliant strategic decision of his 17 months in charge of the New Zealand cricket team. He has gone on holiday. Message from coach: ‘‘Goodbye everybody, I am off to join ScoMo and Barack on their paddle boards in the middle of the ocean. The waves are good out here. And the sinking ship is now just a speck on the distant horizon.’’
Of course Stead said none of those words and that was perhaps the most grievous part of his decision to scarper. It was bound to cause a stink. Stead should have said something, anything. Coaching is about communication and Stead has given us nada. He has become Gary Instead.
Instead of the Black Caps coach turning around the team, he has left his assistants and the players to do the job, while he has swanned off on holiday. Instead of the Black Caps coach making the speech about his holiday in the middle of the India tour, he has left the chief executive to make his excuses. That is poor form.
Now it may well be that Stead cracked and had to take leave. It may well be that New Zealand Cricket told him not to resign but to take a break and think about things. We don’t know. And that’s the point. A lack of communication breeds speculation.
But this is the point where I disembark from the train of public hysteria. Whatever the reasons, good on Stead for making that call. Our society is obsessed with ‘‘work’’, frequently to the detriment of people’s personal health and to their relationships with their family. It is madness.
Are you really going to remember that phone call you just had to make in 10 years’ time. You might, however, just remember the cuddle from your daughter or the first time she hit a cricket ball in the back garden.
The load on the cricket coach is heavier than any other leader in sport. In the past 10 months Stead was in England from May 21 to July 18 at the Cricket World Cup; from August 3 to September 7 he was on tour in Sri Lanka; from early December until January 7 he was with the Black Caps in Australia.
And that is not even to mention the internal touring he has done when the Black Caps have been playing at various grounds around New Zealand. Stead’s brain and his soul must be fried by now. His two young kids will hardly know him – or when dad does step in the door, he will be welcomed by the kids like the returning hero, which will be hard on the missus who has been doing all the heavy lifting at home.
And this touring thing is far, far harder for the coach than the players. He doesn’t get the same down time when the team is away. The players can switch off at the end of the day. The coach is planning, talking to media, communicating with HQ, worrying and analysing away the hours on his laptop.
He is also public enemy number one when things go wrong. Jeremy Coney, articulate and amusing, had a right old go at Stead for taking this apparently pre-planned time off. Note to New Zealand Cricket – if it really was pre-planned, you should have flagged it up way earlier.
Coney said; ‘‘Could you see Steve Hansen leaving the All Blacks after they’re one down against the Lions? We’re facing the three big boys (Australia, India, England) – they were marmalised in Australia and it’s now five-zip at home. Wouldn’t you think the main coach and selector would be there?
‘‘This is the job and this is the main part of the season, it’s ridiculous this is happening at this crunch time. You don’t take your captain away from the helm when you are wanted most, when the ship is in deep shtook, amongst the rocks.’’
Obviously the Steve Hansen comparison is not a good one as the national rugby coach gets huge swathes of time off, and the middle of the Lions series is not comparable to the start of a one-dayer against India. Hansen was also known to like his down time. He put in nothing like the same hours as Graham Henry and Wayne Smith used to. And very sensible too. Get a life.
And of course in the modern sporting vernacular, crunch time comes around just about every month. Crunch time happened almost daily at the Cricket World Cup. Crunch time happened when New Zealand was 1-0 down in Sri Lanka. Crunch time seemed almost hourly during the series in Australia.
So give the coach a break. He needs one. After all, this is only bloody cricket. It’s just a game, guys and girls. Is it really worth sacrificing our well-being and our families for. You may say that once upon a time teams went on tours for months on end, but they didn’t need coaches then. The players got on with it and knew how to enjoy themselves between matches.
But we seem to view sport these days as if it is on a par with international politics. Stead is getting nearly as much flak over her as Australian prime minister Scott Morrison got for staying on holiday in Hawaii as bushfires ravaged the country back home.
That was dumb. I empathise with him when he talked about promising his daughters a holiday and not wanting to break that promise. But when you are prime minister, you can’t afford to make that promise simply because you might have to break it. In December Morrison was lampooned by a Sydney mural. Dressed in an Hawaiian shirt, a lei around his neck, Santa cap on head and cocktail in hand, a smiling ScoMo toasted ‘‘Merry crisis’’. And the people were right. It was a devastatingly poor decision. Morrison has now owned up to that.
But get some perspective people. Stead isn’t BoJo kicking back on Mustique while America assassinates an Iranian leader. Stead’s just a cricket coach. Does our national well-being really depend on whether we win a cricket match? Will New Zealand be a poorer place because our best batsmen can’t score as many runs as a cricket-mad nation of 1.34 billion people?
Mike Hesson walked away because the time away from home and all the things that can entail, eventually broke apart his family. When he announced his retirement Hesson’s voice cracked as he spoke of the sacrifices his wife Kate had made and of how she had been a virtual solo mum to their daughters Holly and Charlie.
If New Zealand Cricket had been sensible they would have reacted to what happened to Hesson, who has now separated from his wife, and they would not have appointed a new coach across all formats because it is not sustainable. They especially would not have appointed a coach with a young family across all formats because that way madness lies. When he took the job Stead said; ‘‘My wife and I discussed it and she said ‘Well, are you having a go at this or not?’, and I said ‘Well am I?’ and she said, ‘Yup, I think it’s the right thing’.
‘‘To get that family support right from the very start was critical for me as well, and that’s not always been there. Having a young family I wouldn’t always have been comfortable myself being away for long periods of time. It’s not just about me it’s about them as well, I’m certainly a family-first type person and that will always be at the forefront of my mind.’’ Stead might as well have made that speech with a red warning light flashing above his head. Lured and seduced by fame and nationalism, the Steads went in with the waters already lapping around their knees. Now they are hanging on to their paddleboards just to survive. Crazy. Completely crazy. Coney said if you want a holiday, go get a job in a hardware store. Really? Are we so obsessed with money, with TV dollars, that our cricket coach is supposed to work himself towards a heart attack. Come on New Zealand, we are better than this. We’re supposed to know what hanging out at a bach really means. So please, please, please give Gary Stead a break.
So give the coach a break. He needs one. After all, this is only bloody cricket. It’s just a game... Is it really worth sacrificing our wellbeing and our families for.