The hidden work of a Test cricket coach
The job entails plotting, planning and running things on and off the field
Shukri Conrad is not only the new coach of South African cricket’s Test team, he’s also a manager on many fronts. He has a staff of 12, which is one greater than the number of players he’ll have on the field in the first Test against the West Indies at Centurion this week.
Does this signify a bloated bureaucracy that hardly justifies its existence (some easyto-hand parallels here, surely?), or are all 12 there to make Conrad’s life easier?
Before we answer the question, let’s look at what Conrad has on his staff: a batting coach (Neil McKenzie), a bowling coach (Charl Langeveldt), a fielding coach (Kruger van Wyk) and a strength and conditioning coach (Runeshan Moodley).
The four are Conrad’s lieutenants. They will hit and throw balls. They will feed balls into the bowling machine. They will also help players find, strengthen or stretch muscles that are seldom used, or are tired.
On the one hand, their presence allows Conrad the freedom to indulge in more highlevel speculations; on the other hand, the coaches themselves also need to be managed, consulted and sought out.
Ostensibly there to make Conrad’s life easier, because they take on some of the practical and operational load, they also complicate it, because they, too, have egos, thoughts and opinions. Conrad needs to listen to them, though he has the last say.
Of equal importance as those four is Matthew Reuben, the performance analyst a title that gives Reuben’s job description a rather fancy gloss. What it boils down to is that he analyses videos of the opposition.
Sometimes he will respond to specific questions from Conrad
and sometimes he will proactively offer insights into the opposition. If he’s doing his job, he will in all likelihood have provided Conrad with a detailed analysis of the West Indies’ left-arm spinner, a Guyanese player called Gudakesh Motie, in the past few days.
Motie took 19 wickets for the visitors in the two recent Tests against Zimbabwe, including 13 in the second Test, and Reuben and Conrad will have studied him hard.
Conrad, having played all his representative cricket for Western Province on the turning tracks of the Cape, is aware of the attacking threat of spin. Luckily, he has chosen his first Test squad well. In Heinrich Klaasen and Aiden Markram he has two of the best players of spin in the country.
Still, Motie will have his tail up though his threat might to some extent be counteracted by the natural pace of SuperSport Park and the Wanderers, the venue for the second Test.
Conrad also has a media manager, Lucy Davey. We live in an age of perceptions, so the partnership between Conrad and Davey is crucial. Winning is everything, but when winning isn’t possible, a positive message is paramount.
Sometimes this will need to be contrived, though that might be slightly counterintuitive for them; Conrad and Davey both tend to call a run-out a run-out rather than a misunderstanding or a mishap.
Conrad is in the middle of a welcome honeymoon period, but this is South Africa, and the clouds of controversy will build up sooner rather than later. From which direction will they blow? We don’t know, but this country has many variables and moving parts. Controversy is only an utterance or a bad decision away.
Conrad’s other backroom staff members include managers, logistics managers, security staff, doctors, physiotherapists and masseurs. This means he’ll be a busy man over the coming weeks as he earns his not inconsiderable salary.
Much of his job will take place away from the media and the public’s prying eyes. Soft skills or in cricketing terms, soft hands are probably his best asset.
What he’s doing is a tough ask, an endless negotiation between keeping people happy and asserting himself.
There are many reasons for getting the balance right. Perhaps one of the most compelling for cricket is that there are points up for grabs in the World Test Championship (WTC) in the two Tests against the Windies. The Proteas now lie in fourth spot, behind Australia, India and Sri Lanka, but two wins (worth 12 points per win) might catapult them into the top two.
Wouldn’t that be a thing Conrad, the newly installed Test coach, taking the Proteas to the WTC finals at the Oval in London in June?