And while I am at it here is an interview with Andrew Strauss by Athers...
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/cricket/article3384990.eceMike Atherton Chief Cricket Correspondent
Published at 12:01AM, April 16 2012
High up in a boardroom eyrie, in a nondescript office block in a nondescript part of town, Andrew Strauss could pass for the city type he thought he would become had his cricket career fallen short of expectations. The only clue that these expectations have been met is the logo of three lions and a crown neatly sewn into his sharp, grey suit.
He is on what cricketers like to call “an earner”. A consultancy firm has asked him to pass on observations on leadership and management to its executives and although he tells me that he is “reticent to lecture anybody on leadership” that is exactly what he has been doing for the hour before we meet. His credentials for so doing are impeccable.
The notion that sport can learn from business and vice versa has always struck me as a little bogus, though, a reaction against the kind of gravy train that I witnessed in my playing days, when huge sums of money were wasted on types who clearly felt they had something to offer but who were, in essence, frauds. Sometimes former sportsmen, sometimes businessmen, they were, to a man, badly prepared and offered clichéd nonsense.
Although Strauss has read many books on management and leadership I suspect that, deep down, he feels a little bit the same. He offers a bland message about “keeping things simple” and leadership being about “common sense” and knows that what these executives really want is an excuse to escape the grind of work for a while and to be associated with one of the most respected sportsmen of the day. Not a star, perhaps, in the way of a Kevin Pietersen or an Andrew Flintoff, but deeply respected, nonetheless; someone who is perceived to have maximised his talents, which is, of course, the desired elixir of all businesses.
He knows that the starry reaction these executives have when they meet him is all nonsense really. It is this grounding, this knowledge that the England bubble, as he terms it, “is far removed from real life” that helps him cope with the job of captaining England and the pressures that, as he found out in Colombo recently, can build rapidly. It helps, he says, that he has moved out of London into the Home Counties, where he was brought up, because the simplicity of life there — training a puppy in the winter months, taking charge of four sheep from Alastair Cook to nibble on his paddock so he doesn’t have to cut it — is an essential counterpoint to it all.
But while he knows all this, he is keen not to lose sight of this artificial, fun world for a good while yet, something that the recent Test match in Colombo, where he became the story for the first time in his captaincy, reinforced. At some stage every England captain comes to the point when fatigue sets in, when he doesn’t want to prove the detractors wrong any more.
“What Colombo taught me,” he says, “is how much gas there is left in the tank yet. No one likes to be the topic of the month; it’s not fun to feel that pressure. I had a long chat with Andy [Flower] and we agreed that sometimes when you become the focus it forces you to confront the problem. It shouldn’t get to the stage where you need a jab to perform but it often does. There are countless examples of players who have timed their run late to re- establish their credentials.”
Did he feel that the focus was fair, or did he feel that it was, in Graeme Swann’s words, a “witch-hunt”? “Well nobody is beyond criticism. I didn’t feel, I don’t feel, that the talk of me finishing after that game was right.
“I can’t agree with that, but those are the things you have to deal with as an England player. I hate my players having to come out and defend me; as a captain you want to feel that you are one of the first names on the team-sheet, so that has been very frustrating. But I was so determined, and feel very determined to take the team further.”
It is easy to underestimate Strauss. An assumption has been made that he is an innately cautious captain; that somehow England’s success is in spite of his tactics in the field at times. But put this to him and he has a very clear riposte. “The game has changed,” he says. “Test cricket used to be played at a sedate pace and often captains had to find ways to encourage players to play their shots. Now, with the pace of the game so fast, I reckon that if you stop most Test players from scoring they will offer you a chance at some stage.
“Our bowlers are brilliant at building pressure by bowling accurately. The players to have done well against us are those that have been prepared to play the patience game, like Mike Hussey and Rahul Dravid. Maybe I could be more proactive with those types of players but, you know, if Plan A is working all the time, I don’t see much point in changing.”
Above all, Strauss is a pragmatist, doing whatever it takes to win, because, he says: “I am the most competitive person I know. I don’t think anybody who has had a lengthy England career has not had a ruthless streak in them. I hate losing.”
Not that he will go beyond what is regarded as acceptable and, in this respect, he is something of a standard bearer for the game, even if he is wary of sounding too preachy. “You never know when you are going to be tested as a captain,” he says. “These things can hit you unawares [he cites the run-out incident against New Zealand at the Oval when Paul Collingwood was one-day captain, and the appeal for the Ian Bell run out last year that was withdrawn by India], and it probably won’t happen more than once or twice but they can have a massive effect on how you are perceived as a captain and how your team is perceived.
“A bit like the match-fixing saga in 2010, these things come from left field and you have to be ready to handle them and how you handle them can make you or break you. Cricket offers a captain a unique opportunity to make decisions that resonate further afield. One of my great strengths in those situations is my ability to stay calm and think clearly, which is not necessarily the case with some of my players.
“When the blood is boiling and all you can think about is winning the game, sometimes the captain needs to step back from the fray and think.”
Needling Strauss is certainly difficult. The closest I come is when I ask about a pundit’s recent assertion that Strauss gave up the one-day captaincy because he was “henpecked”. “Well, that was pretty disappointing considering the person in question knows neither me nor my wife,” he says. So what would happen, I ask, if he wanted his children to go to private school and his wife, Ruth, wanted them to go to state school. What would the outcome be? “If I say I’m not going to answer that then you’ll just jump to conclusions,” he says. “If a relationship relies too much on one side getting his or her way, then it is probably not working very well.” A diplomatic consensus-finder at home as well then.
Given his hatred of losing, the winter must have been very trying. How, for example, did he as captain balance the demands of leadership against the constant batting failures, given that batting is such an individual pursuit? Can a captain possibly have any influence over something so particular?
“Individuals win matches but the only thing I could do this winter was to make sure that it wasn’t swept under the carpet,” he says. “The best thing we did was to sit down after the Abu Dhabi Test and say, ‘lads, this is not good enough; we’ve got to sort this out.’ I am convinced that we made big strides this winter even if the statistics don’t reflect that. Next time we go to that part of the world we will do much better.”
It sounds as though Strauss has his eyes set firmly on India next winter and, as he has stated before, on the twin Ashes challenges in 2013. “That ambition hasn’t changed but I’ve always qualified that by saying you never know what is around the corner tomorrow never mind in six months’ time,” he says. “One thing this winter has taught me is how quickly pressure can build so it’s probably not sensible thinking too far ahead.
“I have thought about the next phase of my life, but not too much. There is time for that. There is a danger that if you think too much about retirement, you can set something in motion and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m not sure what I’ll do, but one thing I’m certain of is that I don’t want to be known as ‘Andrew Strauss, former England captain’ for the rest of my life.” Ambitious still, but grounded in reality: a good combination for an England captain.
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Topic: ‘I hate my players having to come out and defend me’ (Read 1078 times)