Crick Lit: Woolmer's Legacy

Woolmer - well known for his human approach.

The legacy of Bob Woolmer, a 655-page coaching manual, was published these last weeks, and the first one-day series between England and South Africa since his death last year is a good time to take a look.

When the Proteas appointed the former Kent all-rounder as their coach in 1995 they had not yet beaten England in a one-day international, recording four consecutive defeats (a personal favourite being the SCG, 1992, where Dave Richardson and Brian McMillan were stymied by the 'Rain Rule').

Since then South Africa have won 22 out of 32 matches to England's eight, an extraordinarily one-sided record between two supposedly well-matched teams - and one that includes Kevin Pietersen's debut win at Headingley on Friday.

There are more reasons for this domination than Woolmer of course, but the significance of this appointment to both sides remains hugely significant. South Africa were just coming out of international oblivion at the time and might have spent years playing catch-up in a form of the game that was both new to them and evolving rapidly to everyone else.

Instead Woolmer placed the newcomers on the frontier of innovation and within four years they had become the best in the world. Meanwhile England took stagnation to new and mind-numbing depths. They had no excuse to have overlooked Woolmer, who had caught the South African eye at Warwickshire with some of the earliest experiments in pinch- and switch-hitting, psychology and computer analysis. Ordinary players achieved the extraordinary thanks to superior coaching, in particular in one-day tactics and a new emphasis on fielding. All these he honed further in taking South Africa to the brink of the 1999 World Cup while England's committee men tugged at their jacket sleeves and hopped from side to side.

The game has moved on immensely since Allan Donald eclipsed even the ECB for poor decision-making - but Woolmer moved with it. His final contribution is a quite astonishing body of work to have accumulated even with the help of sports scientist Tim Noakes. Covering technical, mental, physical and psychological aspects of Woolmer's methods it provides food for thought to anyone who plays or watches the game and is obviously of particular use to up-and-coming coaches. There are sections on everything from the correct forward defensive position (shots kindly posed by Jacques Kallis in the days before a wide-angle lens was required) to inappropriate alcohol consumption (regrettably no illustrations courtesy of Paul Smith).

If there is one shortcoming of the book it is the failure to capture Woolmer's essentially human approach. If you talk to cricketers about work under Woolmer, from never-quite-made-it juniors to the likes of Graeme Smith and Dermot Reeve to true greats of the game such as Kallis and Shaun Pollock, one constant remains: a glint in the eye reflecting true affection for Woolmer and his methods. This was a guy who taught his charges more than the correct seam position for a conventional away-swinger but that isn't always apparent here. Perhaps we are asking to much of a textbook, and every coach will interpret the material his own way.

It is in any case a tour de force, but an essentially incomplete one. It begins with a 1893 quote from a Rev. Holmes - "We have been told everything relating to the science of the game. There is no fresh ground to be explored" - and then spends 655 pages cheerfully destroying it with the help of illustrations.

A corollary is that further developments in the art and science of cricket are inevitable. Constructive criticism is invited in the introduction and it was clearly in the authors' minds that this would prove the foundation stone of a new and thriving literature in the coaching field.

It is certainly big enough to have done so, being not so much a manual as an encyclopaedia. But encyclopaedia need updating and though someone else will no doubt stick their hand up to fill the void, the debate will be poorer without Woolmer.

Peter May

Bob Woolmer's Art and Science of Cricket, by Bob Woolmer, Tim Noakes & Helen Moffett, is out now from New Holland Publishers Ltd at £30.