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Speaker 1: On the Front Foot with Brian Ronnell and Jeremy Cody,
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Speaker 2: This week the legacy of Ravi Ashwin attributed to the
Speaker 2: Indian spinning as does he retire as one of the
Speaker 2: games great as we wait for the champions Trophy and
Speaker 2: other test matches played on a pitch used previously, we
Speaker 2: don't know how many times, but it does little to
Speaker 2: promote the emains of the test game at a time
Speaker 2: when some of the administrators are planning alterations. Like the
Speaker 2: taylor who's dealing with my new trousers. I almost got
Speaker 2: the impression that he was thinking of adjusting me rather
Speaker 2: than the pants. That's no open season for you, can't
Speaker 2: you either?
Speaker 4: No, you're looking good ones your socks.
Speaker 5: The socks are a bit short, but never mind, pets,
Speaker 5: you're still growing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very hard to wear them. And John Bracewall has
Speaker 2: joined us, one of our greatest spin bowlers, and he's
Speaker 2: going to give us reflection on Ravi Ashvin Brace's Happy
Speaker 2: new Year to you. I haven't seen you for about
Speaker 2: four years.
Speaker 6: No, but remarkably what you look him down so weller
Speaker 6: than I do.
Speaker 2: Oh, I can change that pretty rapidly, I can assure you.
Speaker 2: On the front foot. Talking about Ravi Ashton, an Indian
Speaker 2: writer called him the man who redefined the Indian game
Speaker 2: and in the end he read the lines after being
Speaker 2: overlooked and jumping before he was pushed. Perhaps there's one
Speaker 2: commentator put it he was probably frustrated with the lack
Speaker 2: of pictures offering spinner's assistance. We don't really know, but
Speaker 2: one hundred and six Test matches, eighth highest wicket taker
Speaker 2: in the game, fifth in the all time list of spinners,
Speaker 2: five hundred and thirty seven wickets at twenty three graces,
Speaker 2: does he end the game as one of the greats.
Speaker 6: Without doubt? I mean, I think he changed the game.
Speaker 6: I think he took out a lot of the woke
Speaker 6: talk out of the game. I think his IQ was
Speaker 6: second to none in terms of understanding what he had
Speaker 6: to do when bowling.
Speaker 7: On certain services.
Speaker 6: The only thing that surprised me is that he always
Speaker 6: got a shock when he was sitting on the bench
Speaker 6: and wasn't playing and the Indians preferred somebody else on
Speaker 6: the as they were playing on And I could kind
Speaker 6: of understand his frustration to a certain extent because he
Speaker 6: set out a number of Tests and yet he's still
Speaker 6: got five hundred Test wickets. I was thinking about, you
Speaker 6: know where this discussion would go, and when I say, iq,
Speaker 6: I can never remember ravish Ashwyn beating the bat by
Speaker 6: yards by massive spin. He spun the ball enough to
Speaker 6: beat the bat or enough to catch the edge. And
Speaker 6: what that indicates to me was he had the intellect
Speaker 6: to understand the pace that needed to be bold. So
Speaker 6: rather than trying to celebrate this is me to big spinner,
Speaker 6: he actually said, well, what if this is going to
Speaker 6: turn three feet, how do I get it to turn
Speaker 6: four and a half inches or two and a half
Speaker 6: inches to catch the edge? Which means that I either
Speaker 6: find the right pace for the surface or I take
Speaker 6: pace off in the air in order to be able
Speaker 6: to do that as well. So he could work off
Speaker 6: the air and he could work off the surface and
Speaker 6: to me that sets him apart from so many other bowlers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jerry, he was an innovator too, wasn't he. I
Speaker 2: mean that's what braceis is alluding to to some extent,
Speaker 2: isn't he.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he is, get a brace. Great, great day for
Speaker 5: lawns down here and picked and I can tell you
Speaker 5: now looks it seemed. It seemed to me the interesting
Speaker 5: part of Ashwin to me, he saw spin bowling kind
Speaker 5: of as a laboratory. You know. He kind of tried
Speaker 5: to discover sorts and then put them into action.
Speaker 4: It wasn't so much as a spinner.
Speaker 5: Particularly, You've spoken about that already, but it was the
Speaker 5: approach that he took to pushing the boundary of what
Speaker 5: was possible to do with the ball, do you know
Speaker 5: what I mean?
Speaker 4: It was angles and lengths, It was using the crease.
Speaker 5: It was different types of flights and where the ball
Speaker 5: and then the risk position and where it left, where
Speaker 5: the ball came under the fingers, over the fingers, front
Speaker 5: of the fingers, all that kind of stuff. Can you
Speaker 5: just tell us anything about that? As a person, did
Speaker 5: you do those sorts of things? Are always experimenting? Because
Speaker 5: I can remember in a test at Eden Park, you
Speaker 5: developed a different kind of gather and you were jumping
Speaker 5: more than you had before.
Speaker 4: I mean, just a general.
Speaker 5: Comment about that as a laboratory and working things out
Speaker 5: for yourself.
Speaker 7: You're right about him, not necessarily about me.
Speaker 6: I mean, I mean we were. We played in a
Speaker 6: mirror was reasonably risk averse, mainly because our game was
Speaker 6: so much based around our medium pace game and the
Speaker 6: sort of the wicket.
Speaker 7: So we played on.
Speaker 6: But I do remember thinking that in order to.
Speaker 7: Survive better, I need to bowl better to left handers.
Speaker 6: And because I had quite an orthodox action and a
Speaker 6: reasonably long delivery stride, I used to get too far
Speaker 6: out on the crease coming around the wicket to left handers,
Speaker 6: which meant that I was negating a lot of the
Speaker 6: spin that I that I could get, and also I
Speaker 6: was exaggerating the angle. So what I did was I
Speaker 6: spent probably six months bowling at John Reid in the nets,
Speaker 6: learning to bowl and getting feedback from him, who was
Speaker 6: a good player of spin bowling, both from bowling over
Speaker 6: the wicket and what that felt like, and if I
Speaker 6: bowled wider of the crease over the wicket, what did that?
Speaker 6: What did What was the results of that and also
Speaker 6: coming around and I kind of discovered that if I
Speaker 6: can get in closer to the stunts, he found it
Speaker 6: more difficult to play. So I had to develop that
Speaker 6: jump in order to bring my back my front foot
Speaker 6: back to mid crease, which negated the angle to a
Speaker 6: certain extent, got me closer to the stunts, and that
Speaker 6: worked for some for some time. But the thing about
Speaker 6: Ashvind is that he did it. He developed all these
Speaker 6: different deliveries with a straight arm. Now, not the Dora,
Speaker 6: but what I'm saying about the you know, the woke
Speaker 6: mentality that we tended to have during the nineties and
Speaker 6: through probably too through to twenty ten, as we allowed
Speaker 6: a lot of guys to get away with doucers and
Speaker 6: things like that because the world of cricket would too
Speaker 6: afraid to suggest that it may have actually come illegally.
Speaker 6: He developed a technique which was slightly more front on
Speaker 6: than traditional off spinners, which allowed them to be able
Speaker 6: to bowl those deliveries with a straight arm and without question.
Speaker 6: His action was never called into question. And that's kind
Speaker 6: of the thing I like about Rabi Ashram over everybody else.
Speaker 6: There was never any question about how he delivered those balls.
Speaker 6: There's always the mystery of how did you have the
Speaker 6: courage to be able to do that? And I suppose
Speaker 6: twenty twenty Cricket helped that. I mean, I remember one
Speaker 6: of his great quotes was twenty twenty cricket is about
Speaker 6: six well constructed bad bulls. Nutshell.
Speaker 2: The fact you talk about how he developed those skills
Speaker 2: and you just instanced your bowling to John Reid, how
Speaker 2: much of what you did as a bowler and what
Speaker 2: he would have done as a bowler is about your
Speaker 2: own endeavors rather than help from other people. Did you
Speaker 2: get the encouragement and help and skills of a lot
Speaker 2: of other people or did you have to experiment yourself?
Speaker 6: Well, we were kind of owner train of drivers in
Speaker 6: those days, weren't we. You know, if you had a playmate,
Speaker 6: then it could help, especially if you had somebody who
Speaker 6: was equally there for you as you were for them.
Speaker 6: And so you're getting that mutual feedback almost that query theory,
Speaker 6: but in a more natural way. And John Reid, you know,
Speaker 6: was naturally a coach, and he was very much a
Speaker 6: mentor to me as a coach, So we used to
Speaker 6: spend a lot of time thinking about these sorts of
Speaker 6: things and then going in and going, well, let's try it.
Speaker 6: And I became quite a good bowler at left tenders
Speaker 6: later in my career because of that. But it had
Speaker 6: the rest of the time, you just got along the
Speaker 6: practice and you bowlt at somebody for ten minutes, then
Speaker 6: somebody said, you know, last round, and everybody tried to
Speaker 6: hit you for six to finish the net, and that
Speaker 6: was kind of your learning experience. And you know so,
Speaker 6: but nowadays you know you have as a professional, you've
Speaker 6: got basically eight hours a day every day. So therefore
Speaker 6: you are you can't just go and bowl for two
Speaker 6: hours without thinking about it, thinking about the game and
Speaker 6: how it breaks down, and you get so much more
Speaker 6: information that surely it's creating an environment where people do
Speaker 6: grow a lot faster than perhaps we did, and I
Speaker 6: think that is the case.
Speaker 5: Race. It's interesting you talk about the nets and bowling
Speaker 5: and the nets as a spinner. Most of our first
Speaker 5: class sides have a batting and a bowling coach. But
Speaker 5: my impression is the bowling coach tend to be either.
Speaker 5: They're former seamers mainly that maybe right, I don't know,
Speaker 5: but they're not former spin bowlers like yourself, And I
Speaker 5: just wonder. I know both seamers and spinners project the
Speaker 5: ball to the batsman, but I sense there are quite
Speaker 5: essential differences, you know, in the gather, in the release,
Speaker 5: in the angle perhaps of the run up slightly.
Speaker 4: We know the length of the run up is usually different.
Speaker 5: What are the differences about a spin coach if we
Speaker 5: talk about that. I mean, I don't think we have
Speaker 5: a spin coach for the New Zealand side unless we
Speaker 5: go overseas. Ozzie do in Vittori, England do in Patel.
Speaker 5: We use rung and a Harath and Mushtarak when we're overseas,
Speaker 5: But that's generally where we see spin playing a bigger
Speaker 5: role in the tour, and I just wonder why not
Speaker 5: in New Zealand. Maybe we could investigate if it's not
Speaker 5: turning and being sympathetic half the surface, maybe we could
Speaker 5: investigate flight more. I don't know what are your thoughts
Speaker 5: around that. Should we have a bowling coach who's a spinner?
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, I think we have Paul Wiseman, I think
Speaker 7: is the national spin bowling coach.
Speaker 4: Yeah he is.
Speaker 6: So his job is to communicate with the national coaches
Speaker 6: and the national bowling coaches. And I assume, and I
Speaker 6: don't know this, but I assume that a big part
Speaker 6: of that is having one national program for spin So
Speaker 6: how are we developing spin across the board from the
Speaker 6: young person who walks in and says, I want to
Speaker 6: be like to a first class bowling program for spinners,
Speaker 6: you know, so professional bowling program for spin bowlers as well.
Speaker 6: So that's that's men's and boys and women and men.
Speaker 6: So I assume that he runs that program. I'm not
Speaker 6: one hundredbstent sure if he does, but I assume he
Speaker 6: runs that program. One of the things that kind of
Speaker 6: concerned me when I returned back to New Zealand after
Speaker 6: a long time away was that the number of our
Speaker 6: spin bowlers were actually reluctant to bowl in the nets.
Speaker 6: They preferred to go out and bowler to cone and
Speaker 6: feel comfortable bowling at a cone. Well, a cone's never
Speaker 6: going to hit you for six cone's never going to
Speaker 6: sweep a ball that you want to actually test out
Speaker 6: with it. It is difficult to actually sleep if I
Speaker 6: bolted at this pace. You know, It's almost an avoidance thing.
Speaker 6: And I think that's come about from the fact that
Speaker 6: as soon as the spinner comes on in the nets.
Speaker 6: When with a lot of our nets and a lot
Speaker 6: of our cricketers been pace based, is that they basically
Speaker 6: just go and try and whack the spinners. So what
Speaker 6: are you looking for when you're actually looking for talent
Speaker 6: in spin bowlers in a net session? And I look
Speaker 6: for guys who get hit in the air at a
Speaker 6: round about stomach height all the time into the nets
Speaker 6: as opposed to hit out of the nets. And that
Speaker 6: indicates to me that that person is beating the guy
Speaker 6: between before it pitches and also after it pitches, So
Speaker 6: he's beaten them in that sort of like two meter
Speaker 6: space away from the bat.
Speaker 7: So he's either beating them with flight or he's beating
Speaker 7: them off the surface because he's.
Speaker 6: Mishitting the ball. No one deliberately kind of hits the
Speaker 6: ball at stomach height, you know, waist height under the covers.
Speaker 2: Is that what a spin bowler has to do nowadays,
Speaker 2: which is probably a little bit different when you were
Speaker 2: preparing for first class cricket and for Test match cricket.
Speaker 6: The odd.
Speaker 2: Now he has to be adept at either all three
Speaker 2: versions of the game. Now, Test od I T twenty
Speaker 2: or specialist, or he's going to have a bag full
Speaker 2: of variations that he can carry and drop his hand
Speaker 2: into it and pull out one for the next game.
Speaker 2: And that to me seems to be the preparation plans
Speaker 2: for many of our spinners. Is that going to be
Speaker 2: an encouraging thing for spinners?
Speaker 6: Well, most guys who end up getting through to the
Speaker 6: national national national program the men's or women's international side
Speaker 6: basically have had a feeling good grounding at domestic level
Speaker 6: in all three forms. Would you agree? No, one sort
Speaker 6: of comes through doesn't play in all three forms. Yep.
Speaker 6: So they generally play in those or have had a
Speaker 6: good experience in all three forms at formats of the
Speaker 6: game to get to that to get to that point
Speaker 6: where they get selected. The difficulty is is having the
Speaker 6: backing enough cricket and also enough consistent success to feel
Speaker 6: confident and wanted in your unit as well?
Speaker 7: You know, So are all our spinners wanted or are
Speaker 7: they just sometimes needed?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 4: I think I think we know the answer to that.
Speaker 5: We've got people like Patel, for example, who has he
Speaker 5: played a Test match in New Zealand. He's only really
Speaker 5: needed in Asia to be really honest, and we don't
Speaker 5: see many of them.
Speaker 6: Really.
Speaker 5: We play four seamers and we've always been a seam
Speaker 5: based attack, perhaps because of our climate and our history,
Speaker 5: and you know, we grow grass pretty well and it
Speaker 5: also provides us with a point of difference from other
Speaker 5: countries to a here and so you know, but we
Speaker 5: obviously also play you know, many tests away, almost as
Speaker 5: many as home. I would have thought most times, you know,
Speaker 5: I've been thinking for years, Brace, we maybe we should
Speaker 5: have a little plan if there was one to prepare
Speaker 5: one or two venues around New Zealand where there is
Speaker 5: decent sunshine ours and we set about preparing a pitch
Speaker 5: or two perhaps in the block and for Brian, get
Speaker 5: it as near to the middle as you can. So
Speaker 5: the boundary sizes are similar both sides. And you know,
Speaker 5: we could not what not bunts and burners. I'm not
Speaker 5: suggesting that, but I'm suggesting ones that will assist spin
Speaker 5: because it's not only for the bowlers, Brace, it's for
Speaker 5: the keepers, it's for the it's for the men fielding
Speaker 5: and close, you know, the slips, the batpad, the pad bat,
Speaker 5: it's the men and the you know, catching a short cover.
Speaker 4: Those kinds of things.
Speaker 5: You know, there's quite a lot you can learn as
Speaker 5: a captain, for example, practicing captaining spin.
Speaker 4: I think we would get great benefits if we could
Speaker 4: do that.
Speaker 6: It's it's as important to the batter as well, Jeremy. Yeah,
Speaker 6: a number of times we actually send our batters away
Speaker 6: to go to sweep school in India because they don't
Speaker 6: get enough decent spin bowling or we can't find spin bowling.
Speaker 6: Weik gets to New Zealand. How ridiculous is that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so they go India to learn how.
Speaker 6: To bat and face spin twenty four hours of the day.
Speaker 6: It just it kind of doesn't make sense that we've
Speaker 6: got these beautiful indoor grass centers now around the country
Speaker 6: that we're not developing these these programs that says, this
Speaker 6: is just as much for batters as it is for bowlers,
Speaker 6: because the art of weighing spin is it's actually and
Speaker 6: it's probably the greatest feedback that we used to get
Speaker 6: when we went to the subcontinent, and the subcontinent batters
Speaker 6: would just say, well, you actually just don't watch the
Speaker 6: ball well enough, you know, kind of because we didn't
Speaker 6: really have to, so you know, whereas they actually learn
Speaker 6: to watch the ball.
Speaker 7: And I remember when Bert Suttlet said to me that
Speaker 7: he could see the seam on the ball and he
Speaker 7: was about he was Floods's age at that stage.
Speaker 4: God still seeing it, still see it, and he.
Speaker 6: Could see the seam on the ball. Now, that is
Speaker 6: one of the arts of batting, is one that learns
Speaker 6: skill of watching closely and the laziness of not watching,
Speaker 6: you know, vaguely watching a round thing coming at you.
Speaker 6: And that's the difference between good batters and and and
Speaker 6: poor batteries and great batters and and potentially great betters.
Speaker 6: Is that ability to be able to pick the ball
Speaker 6: up and understand what it's going to do off the surface,
Speaker 6: and then study it and get better at it. So
Speaker 6: it's not just the bowling thing. It's a batting thing
Speaker 6: as well.
Speaker 5: You give yourself time brace you've earned some time as
Speaker 5: a batsman, and that's the difference between defending or attacking. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and if you can see it in the air rotating
Speaker 5: coming down to you. I didn't learn that skill until
Speaker 5: Turner spoke to me when we went to Pakistan in
Speaker 5: eighty four. My head normally just start to split immediately,
Speaker 5: you know, just watching the ball that hard.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I think somebody like Glenn, who found a
Speaker 6: lot of things quite natural, found it quite difficult to
Speaker 6: deal with people who didn't find those things quite natural.
Speaker 6: And it was quite interesting when he did become a
Speaker 6: coach and he kind of understands stood that started to
Speaker 6: get to understand the mortality of different people and the
Speaker 6: reason why they weren't as good as him. Caine's another
Speaker 6: one who's you know, his ability. Everyone says he judges
Speaker 6: links so much better than everybody else. He bes link
Speaker 6: up quicker than anybody else. But when you watch Cain practice,
Speaker 6: here's an extraordinarily good ball watcher. And you can see
Speaker 6: guys who do that, and then you can see guys
Speaker 6: who stop watching the ball and then they estimate where
Speaker 6: it's going to pitch. The are the guys I love bowling.
Speaker 2: To coming out all of that of what you and
Speaker 2: Jeremy have just been talking about, race that the wanted
Speaker 2: and needed scenario you're talking about. We've also got to
Speaker 2: have captains who've got the courage to bowl spin bowlers.
Speaker 2: I sense that Ben Stokes is happy to bowl spinners
Speaker 2: and give them opportunities early. We seem reluctant to give
Speaker 2: spin bowlers the opportunity to get the experience in greater success,
Speaker 2: and it might count against the confidence of those bowlers
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think you get that though. I mean, let's
Speaker 6: have a look at the last fifteen years or thirteen years.
Speaker 6: Let's say Tim Salvey's reign. What was that fifteen years. Yeah,
Speaker 6: we were pretty blessed with three guys that kind of
Speaker 6: didn't need to go past to a lot of extent,
Speaker 6: and he could rotate those and then you had somebody
Speaker 6: like de grand Holme or somebody like that who could
Speaker 6: actually fill that gap and stop the game for a
Speaker 6: period while they rested. You know. So they had a
Speaker 6: pretty good rotation system and they had some guys who
Speaker 6: were pretty skilled at what they did, and so it's
Speaker 6: fudged the numbers to a certain extent. Now, when we
Speaker 6: had Daniel Vittori prior to that, you know, he was
Speaker 6: Stephen Bleming's go to for a lot of a lot
Speaker 6: of the time I need a wicket, I'll go to Steep,
Speaker 6: I'll go to Daniel. So during that era, but he
Speaker 6: ended up, you know, Daniel just ended up bowling too
Speaker 6: many opens, so he was almost you know, he got fatigued.
Speaker 6: So he flattened out. He was always best to be bowled,
Speaker 6: and in spells of seven and eight he became quite
Speaker 6: predictable when those spells became half a session to a session.
Speaker 6: And so therefore your strike radism is great.
Speaker 2: If there's one thing you could do in terms of
Speaker 2: developing spinners, now, what would be the key point for
Speaker 2: you in terms of how we develop our spinners.
Speaker 6: I'd play them on bigger grounds at underage cricket. There
Speaker 6: are a lot of kids turn up at underage cricket
Speaker 6: and they want to bowl spin. They may not be made.
Speaker 6: One of the reasons maybe they're not strong enough the bulk.
Speaker 6: But they play on tea spoon grounds and they get
Speaker 6: bullied and they become disillusioned, and everybody goes with fostering
Speaker 6: spin look at us. But they play on something where
Speaker 6: you can miss out of six, play on grounds where
Speaker 6: you can't hit boundaries at ease, and then you will
Speaker 6: start to see batsmanship evolved, not bully ship, and you'll
Speaker 6: see spinners come into their own in terms of their
Speaker 6: learning because they're not getting just belted out of the attack.
Speaker 5: For those people who are listening who might have kids,
Speaker 5: which is what you're sort of talking a bit about
Speaker 5: there who wish to be a spinner. Let me ask
Speaker 5: you just a couple of questions about about a youngster
Speaker 5: learning to bowl spin. Would you go for the revs
Speaker 5: first or accuracy?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a really interesting one because it's I remember
Speaker 6: as a kid watching a video and I think it
Speaker 6: was run by Martin Horton where he interviewed Into carleb
Speaker 6: into carb Allen, who's a leg spin violence, and he
Speaker 6: asked him that exact question, and into carb Alum said,
Speaker 6: I will go for accuracy because I'll stay on and
Speaker 6: I have control of the game. And then another time
Speaker 6: he was talking to and I can't remember who was, Oh,
Speaker 6: it may have been Ashley Mallett, and Ashley Mallett said
Speaker 6: to the same question, you know, the first thing I'd
Speaker 6: teach a kid to do is I'll teach him how
Speaker 6: to spin the ball and spin the ball hard, and
Speaker 6: then as he grows in confidence, he will learn to
Speaker 6: control that. But he won't get that spin back if
Speaker 6: he just concentrates on line and length and staying on.
Speaker 6: And so I went with that philosophy one because it
Speaker 6: was a finger spinner and it made sense to me,
Speaker 6: and it suited my mentality, and I kind ofunderstood that
Speaker 6: the leg spinner may be slightly different.
Speaker 7: So the difference between the wrist spinner, who has a
Speaker 7: stronger action and therefore can.
Speaker 6: Get that spin a little bit easier, and the finger spinner,
Speaker 6: who ends up just being a roller, and the accuracy
Speaker 6: between that. And I think left hand left armors and
Speaker 6: right arms are slightly different as well, just with the angles.
Speaker 6: But I'd certainly think with off spin in particular, you
Speaker 6: need to be able to give the ball a rip
Speaker 6: to make a difference.
Speaker 4: What about the length of run up?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think a run up. To me, a run
Speaker 6: up was just about rhythm. I mean, by the end
Speaker 6: of my career, I don't even think I measured out
Speaker 6: on runner. I mean I could just feel I was
Speaker 6: in the right place and it got my body into
Speaker 6: position for the pace that I wanted to bowl, uh
Speaker 6: and the balance I needed at the crease. If you
Speaker 6: look at somebody like Nathan Lyon, you know he walks
Speaker 6: for what probably near on seven or eight meters and
Speaker 6: then trots two yards and bolts and gets a lot
Speaker 6: of revs on the wall chained warm. You know, basically
Speaker 6: walked in but had a great turn of his shoulders
Speaker 6: and rotation, but was really big through the shoulders, so
Speaker 6: there's a bit of body shape involved in it, and
Speaker 6: understanding it's not a this is what I do to
Speaker 6: tell just wanders in, doesn't it, and just off a
Speaker 6: few paces, you know, I think that half of a
Speaker 6: satin has run up is observing the batsman, so he
Speaker 6: almost stalks him, as you would say, like Groucho Marx
Speaker 6: the waitress. He's almost got that sort of look about him.
Speaker 6: I'm watching this intently. It suits your body type and
Speaker 6: what rhythm that you need to get from it, and
Speaker 6: it's kind of all coaching is about understanding the individual's
Speaker 6: personality as well. It's not about imposing a technique. It's
Speaker 6: not about imposing a theory. It's about getting to know
Speaker 6: the person. So you're coaching the whole person, how he thinks,
Speaker 6: how he behaves, how he sees the game of cricket.
Speaker 6: Is he an optimist or a pessimist. You can't impose
Speaker 6: optimism on a pessimist, but there is a position for
Speaker 6: a pessimist in game of cricket. Generally it is called
Speaker 6: open the batting's interesting braces.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for your time. We look forward
Speaker 2: to perhaps another call from you at some stage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks Bank, Thanks mate, Brian Waddell, Jeremy Coney on
Speaker 1: the front foot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, great to have Brace's along. We haven't had him
Speaker 2: on the program previously, Jerry, but he certainly adds an
Speaker 2: understanding of spin bowling, and spinner's probably something that you
Speaker 2: understand and us lesser cricketing brains don't really think about
Speaker 2: those things that often, So it was lovely to hear
Speaker 2: him just articulate that from a spin boler's point of view.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and he's got plenty more to tell us too,
Speaker 5: I think, and and our and our followers to Wadds,
Speaker 5: he's he's had to go through that sort of that
Speaker 5: whole process himself, really coaching himself to be really honest,
Speaker 5: and then as a coach later on coaching people.
Speaker 4: So he's got a lot. He's got a good story
Speaker 4: and it's and it's good to listen to it.
Speaker 5: I personally, I can't wait for spinners to start in
Speaker 5: the this match because I think the game really comes
Speaker 5: alive when you've got different fields and captaincy you see
Speaker 5: involved as well, and batsman attacking and all the whole range.
Speaker 5: Of things, I think, and then the overrate improves all
Speaker 5: those kinds of things. I think it's a very nice
Speaker 5: part of test cricket. So I think there are things
Speaker 5: we can still talk to him about actually, like the
Speaker 5: New Zealand Pathway.
Speaker 4: We should talk to him about that as well. So
Speaker 4: I hope to get him again on the front foot
Speaker 4: with Waddle and Cody.
Speaker 2: Another Spinboller and the aforementioned Paul Wiseman, who was spoken
Speaker 2: about by John Bracewell. He's the director of talent identification
Speaker 2: at the under nineteen level and he's been watching the
Speaker 2: under nineteenth recently. Auckland retained that title after a week
Speaker 2: of quality cricket at Lincoln for that development phase. Wellington
Speaker 2: led into the final round but lost narrowly to Canterbury,
Speaker 2: while Auckland, after a loss against Wellington in round one,
Speaker 2: mustered the consistency needed in tournament play to secure the
Speaker 2: title again over Northern Districts and Wellington. It's a non
Speaker 2: World Cup year but still an important stage of the
Speaker 2: careers of the young players, and Paul Wiseman joins us
Speaker 2: to just tell us about how successful the under nineteen
Speaker 2: tournament was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 7: I think.
Speaker 3: I don't think it was ever a non successful Under
Speaker 3: nineteen National tournament because you know, we produced some pretty
Speaker 3: amazing facilities for these guys down here. They get to
Speaker 3: play on first class, which is basically on love the
Speaker 3: outfields and untill laid on for them. So if they
Speaker 3: can't get something out of that, then there's something wrong,
Speaker 3: and I think there's a lot going right in that space.
Speaker 3: This year we changed it a little bit. Normally it's
Speaker 3: just white ball formats. This year we're introduced a three
Speaker 3: day game to the tournament, and we played that on
Speaker 3: a used wicket, So we played the first three one
Speaker 3: day games on one pitch and then we stayed on
Speaker 3: the same pitch and played a three day game, hoping
Speaker 3: to bring spin and keepers in closing fields and cataincy
Speaker 3: and batting against spin and all that sort of thing
Speaker 3: into play. So from that perspective, and they have two
Speaker 3: really good type finishes, that was a real success from
Speaker 3: our point of view.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's encouraging that that is being done too,
Speaker 2: because it then becomes not about the points and who
Speaker 2: wins the title, but then you see players in different
Speaker 2: situations which normally you might not see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent. Look, we've been looking over this
Speaker 3: for a while and there's been a slow and steady
Speaker 3: decline and the amount of Red Bull cricket played it
Speaker 3: at school level and I understand the reasons for that,
Speaker 3: but the skills and the tactical awareness of these players,
Speaker 3: whilst it's really good when you talk about the too
Speaker 3: short formats of the game, there's got the naive when
Speaker 3: it comes to Red Bull cricket. So we have two
Speaker 3: two day games in the under seventeens and we have
Speaker 3: one in one rep well, one three day game in
Speaker 3: under nineteens. We're hoping to have the nearest neighbor as well,
Speaker 3: but budget not in the way of that. So it
Speaker 3: would have been nice to have a home and away
Speaker 3: and then they would have had two three day games.
Speaker 3: And the way we've looked at it is that every
Speaker 3: second year in a World Cup year, it's going to
Speaker 3: be white ball only because that's what the World Cup's about.
Speaker 3: But it sort of means that our best seventeams tend
Speaker 3: to be in the under nineteens at under eighteen level,
Speaker 3: so they should get at least one set of two
Speaker 3: day games in seventeens or at least one sentence a
Speaker 3: three day game in the under nineteen. So just what
Speaker 3: it also means is the ems that we're bringing these
Speaker 3: players down don't just focus solely on white balls. They've
Speaker 3: actually got to train with these guys leading into it
Speaker 3: in the red ball and they tend to have, you know,
Speaker 3: in house games or nearest neighbor games and things like that.
Speaker 3: So just making sure that we're keeping the red ball
Speaker 3: alive because at the moment on the world scene it's
Speaker 3: I think it's flourishing looking at the crowds that are
Speaker 3: coming in. So we just want to make sure, you know,
Speaker 3: we keep that rolling on through our age group and
Speaker 3: prepared the better for when they start playing first class cricket.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is there a balance there that you want to
Speaker 2: or do you have an emphasis on one type of
Speaker 2: cricket over the other, white wall over red ball, because
Speaker 2: part of what you want to do is get New
Speaker 2: Zealand's emerging test match talent as well, don't you one.
Speaker 3: We've also introduced what's called the men's Development Squad, which
Speaker 3: is the group that kind of sits between age group
Speaker 3: and a contracted player that can that player that can
Speaker 3: get a little bit lost in club lands they've had
Speaker 3: their under ninety experience, but not quite making a contracted
Speaker 3: player in their EMA because it's pretty it's pretty tough
Speaker 3: to get a contract these days. You don't just walk
Speaker 3: out of those things and straight into a contract too often.
Speaker 3: So we've created that space where we have trainings with
Speaker 3: those players during the winter and then we play against
Speaker 3: all the m A eight teams to really try to
Speaker 3: promote those players from within, and that's been really successful.
Speaker 3: There's been a lot of players come out of that
Speaker 3: mean's development program that now I do have contracts, and
Speaker 3: I think it's helped some of the head coaches around
Speaker 3: the country to look outside of their sixteen nine contract
Speaker 3: list at the talent that's coming through. So I think
Speaker 3: that's been largely successful at the moment, and those coaches
Speaker 3: are really engaged and getting those players that aren't contracted
Speaker 3: still training in their environments, which is you know, that's
Speaker 3: everything we're looking for. So it's really good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wouldn't expect you to name names, but do
Speaker 2: you see talent there that you judge as of now
Speaker 2: could be test match players or ODI players internationally for
Speaker 2: New Zealand and they need the extra work and opportunities
Speaker 2: that the game can give them one hundred.
Speaker 3: The way it kind of works out is every second
Speaker 3: year we have an Under nineteen World Cup team. Out
Speaker 3: of that boarding fifteen man squad tends to be eighty
Speaker 3: percent will go on and play first class cricket and
Speaker 3: about thirty percent and become black Caps. That's sort of
Speaker 3: the way it's it's run.
Speaker 5: So it would be.
Speaker 3: Unlikely that someone that comes that we have an under
Speaker 3: nineteen national tournament and is not future black Caps in there.
Speaker 3: So that's always really exciting, and it's sort of I
Speaker 3: suppose the long year in the game, you'd like to
Speaker 3: think your eye gets better and better, but it's it
Speaker 3: doesn't always. You know, it doesn't always work out that way.
Speaker 3: As you know is as players develop at different different
Speaker 3: age ages and stages, and they have different maturation physically
Speaker 3: and mentally. So it's some times you see something and
Speaker 3: you go, wow, that's amazing, and it doesn't eventually. But
Speaker 3: I think the more you're in the game, the more
Speaker 3: you start getting a little bit more accurate with it.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it was great at this tournament season. Some
Speaker 3: talent there that you think has got It's not just
Speaker 3: the skills you see on show or the tactical awareness.
Speaker 3: It's the other things, the soft things around that you're
Speaker 3: here from their coaches and parents and things about how
Speaker 3: much they love the game, the drive and the drive
Speaker 3: to get better. So it's that kid that goes and
Speaker 3: trains on his own outside of outside of organized trainings
Speaker 3: and most of the things that are things that we're
Speaker 3: looking for as well that we know is a really
Speaker 3: good recipe if you've got that skill to going on
Speaker 3: to high on us. So there's certainly a number of
Speaker 3: players in this tournament in that space. We've got three
Speaker 3: guys that've got the opportunity of going back that we're
Speaker 3: in the last little couple in South Africa that are
Speaker 3: still young enough to play in the next one, so
Speaker 3: that there was no given to that. But you know,
Speaker 3: there are obviously guys that are on our dars. Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we look at the current first class domestic
Speaker 2: scene at the moment, there are a number of players
Speaker 2: who are part of the twenty nineteen side who are
Speaker 2: at the forefront. I think Willow Rat was one of those,
Speaker 2: the fella from Canterbury who took over the captaincy role
Speaker 2: this year and has before well scored a double hundred.
Speaker 2: Those players have come through that development system, haven't they.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they have. You know that that's a nice group.
Speaker 3: Even our last World Cup now we've got you know,
Speaker 3: that was just this time last year. We've got like
Speaker 3: five contracted domestic players now and there's about six that
Speaker 3: have played first class curricula. Even in the nineteenth this
Speaker 3: year we had two contracted players playing in the tournament,
Speaker 3: you know, one that wasn't available because because he was
Speaker 3: playing Super Smash. So it's very exciting times. And that's
Speaker 3: where my job satisfaction comes from as see of these
Speaker 3: guys coming through and being successful as they go through,
Speaker 3: not just as as players, but you know, becoming good people,
Speaker 3: good humans, good good parents, and good members of society.
Speaker 3: That's that's you know, that's where I get incredible job
Speaker 3: satisfaction from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's important. And to keep them on the radar,
Speaker 2: I suppose in terms of being part of the New
Speaker 2: Zealand game, because you don't want to lose them to
Speaker 2: contracts elsewhere, which could be an inevitable Which could be
Speaker 2: an inevitable option, couldn't it for some of the younger
Speaker 2: players Exactly.
Speaker 3: Look, we're a small nation, as everyone knows but a
Speaker 3: nation that gets stuck in and a lot of our
Speaker 3: a lot of our young athletes, male and female, play
Speaker 3: multiple sports and it's it's part of our philosophy of
Speaker 3: New Zealand cricketers that we extent to play as many
Speaker 3: sports as they can until they actually have to make
Speaker 3: a decision one way or another. And we've had we've
Speaker 3: had several players over the years that are very good
Speaker 3: at at a number of sports and it comes to
Speaker 3: a crunch and they choose, choose their direction.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 3: We get some and we lose them sometimes, and that's okay.
Speaker 3: I think that the ones that we lose, you'd like
Speaker 3: to think the other sports will get a better athlete
Speaker 3: because they've been playing cricket, and the ones that stick
Speaker 3: with us, I think we get better athletes because they've
Speaker 3: been playing other sports as well. So we tend to
Speaker 3: develop a little bit later than some of the other
Speaker 3: nations that play a hell of a lot of cricket
Speaker 3: and specialize really early. But I think in the long
Speaker 3: run it sets us up pretty well. And I think,
Speaker 3: you know, I think the results speak to themselves. Over
Speaker 3: the last ten years or so, the way the Black
Speaker 3: Caps have performed consistently on the world stage has been
Speaker 3: pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 2: Indeed, well all the best in in terms of your
Speaker 2: developmental role with the side and producing those cricket as
Speaker 2: we need to carry the camp because there's going to
Speaker 2: be more cricket. Whether or not it's a Test match,
Speaker 2: it's hard to know, but there's obviously going to be
Speaker 2: more cricket for than the world over, isn't there over
Speaker 2: coming years?
Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly changing face as everyone knows, and there's the
Speaker 3: lure of big dollars and look at attracts players to
Speaker 3: our sport, which is great. But we've got also be
Speaker 3: aware of that and move with the times and understand
Speaker 3: that some players are just going to be focused on
Speaker 3: short form cricket and that's okay, but we do need
Speaker 3: to make sure that we prop up our red bull
Speaker 3: cricket because for us purists, you and me, a great
Speaker 3: Test match beats any other formats. So we want to
Speaker 3: we want to make sure that the game stays alive,
Speaker 3: well healthy in this country as it is in a
Speaker 3: number of other countries at the moment, no argument there was.
Speaker 2: Thanks very much for joining us on the front foot.
Speaker 3: I please thanks to us.
Speaker 2: Finally this week Jerry just a quick look at an
Speaker 2: email We mentioned one last week and we received an
Speaker 2: email from Fraser Fraser Marriott, whose father passed away recently,
Speaker 2: who I played cricket with back many many years ago,
Speaker 2: passed away from cancer and enjoyed our program and said
Speaker 2: how much his father enjoyed the latter stages of his
Speaker 2: life listening to our coverage and he was very enamored
Speaker 2: with a program you did with Australian colleagues Allam Collins
Speaker 2: and Jeff Lemon, who do an excellent podcast as well.
Speaker 2: So it was nice to get that comment from Fraser.
Speaker 2: But he did pose a question to us and I
Speaker 2: think we sort of covered it last week about the
Speaker 2: situation where South Africa and the World Test Championship final
Speaker 2: against India and many of the Australians saying it's a
Speaker 2: little bit unfair and the fact that they didn't have
Speaker 2: to play against the sides that New Zealand and England
Speaker 2: and Australia had to play. But I guess that's what
Speaker 2: goes with the territory, doesn't it. I mean, he talked
Speaker 2: about the irony being that the BCCI stroke ICC set
Speaker 2: up the future Tourist program commercially fixated with regular lengthy
Speaker 2: series among the top big three. The question is do
Speaker 2: we think there's any chance that South Africa's surprise qualification
Speaker 2: might actually prompt a rethink of a more equitable distribution. Well,
Speaker 2: it's hard to know really what the ICC is thinking
Speaker 2: about in the future series of the World Is Championship,
Speaker 2: isn't it.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, that's one of the big issues that's confronting
Speaker 5: cricket really. Who runs cricket, who's in charge, who's passing
Speaker 5: down things so that you know what the setup is
Speaker 5: for the next couple of years. We know, we said,
Speaker 5: and we all agree. I think all our listeners will
Speaker 5: agree as well. It's not an ideal tournament, the World
Speaker 5: Test Championship. It has many little holes and problems in it,
Speaker 5: but that's what it is.
Speaker 4: And we are with it.
Speaker 5: And it's been an extremely interesting last year, hasn't it.
Speaker 5: We talked about that last week as well. But it's
Speaker 5: nice to get someone who's been enjoying the program anyway.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, Fraser, thanks very much for the email. Sorry
Speaker 2: to hear about Dave's passing, but it's nice that you
Speaker 2: were able to share those thoughts with us and anybody
Speaker 2: else would like to send us an email. Feel free
Speaker 2: to do so on the front foot twenty at gmail
Speaker 2: dot com. On the front foot twenty, that's two zero
Speaker 2: at gmail dot com. That's it for this week, doing
Speaker 2: put your feedback up again and enjoy this sunny conditions. Boy,
Speaker 2: I don't think I better start talking about the sun
Speaker 2: in Wellington because people will start talking about the wind
Speaker 2: and done for about ten days and it's finally come back.
Speaker 2: It's finally come back to the window. Yeah we needed it,
Speaker 2: just just to call.
Speaker 4: Us down of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well that's great, that's great once. I'm glad you're
Speaker 5: getting some of this good weather. At the moment it
Speaker 5: looks as though were in for a change though words
Speaker 5: in the next few days.
Speaker 2: They're right, Okay, we've got I've got Dream eleven super
Speaker 2: Smash to look at. I'm not looking forward to indeed.
Speaker 4: Well, we'll join again next week absolutely. I'm off to
Speaker 4: watch some of the audio
Speaker 1: Summer for more from news Talks that'd be listen live
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