The international coaching carousel

How is it that in cricket we keep ending up with the same coaches almost on a never-ending loop?

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Gary Kirsten averaged between 35 and 45 in Test cricket in eight different years. We talk about bowlers being metronomic, but he may have been the most metronomic of any batter we have ever seen.

It is just stunning consistency, year after year, without really much dominance. Clearly, he had some peaks, but Kirsten wasn’t really about the peaks. He was about the fact that he could go out, nudge the ball around, not go out to the new ball, and make a decent amount of runs, time and time again.

For most fans, that is what Gary Kirsten is going to be remembered for.

Of course, despite the fact that he’s a solid Test batter, it might also be his one-day record that some people remember. He made 188 in the 1996 World Cup game that was famous for a bunch of different reasons.

One, it was the second highest score ever, and it wasn’t that far off Viv Richards’ World Record at that stage. At that point, the West Indian legend actually had the two highest scores in ODI cricket at the same time.

But even in that game where Gary Kirsten very nearly breaks the world record, it’s more famous for the fact that Allan Donald sent Sultan Zarawani, who refused to wear a helmet when facing him, to the hospital.

So when it comes to Gary Kirsten’s career, even when he does something good, it’s not always the sexiest thing ever. And so in the end, Gary Kirsten is not actually really remembered as much as a player as he is as a coach.

Most of that comes from his time with India, which is obviously a high-profile role, and he had incredible success. And of course, leading that side is automatically a high-profile position. But then the 2011 World Cup comes along. And I think for most cricket fans around the world, no matter where you’re from, you now think of Gary Kirsten as a coach.

And of course, he’s coached quite a few teams. On top of India, he also looked after his own South Africa. He was in Pakistan for a quick cup of coffee. Now, he is Sri Lanka’s head coach.

So that means that Gary Kirsten has had four pretty prominent head coach positions in international cricket. And when I saw that he got the Sri Lanka job, my first thought was, how is it that in cricket we keep ending up with the same coaches almost on a never-ending loop?

Because there’s almost no doubt about this. When it comes to international cricket, we have this carousel of coaches that just keeps going round, and round, and round again.

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Dav Whatmore is one of Australia’s first ever Asian players. He also goes on to have a very, very good coaching career.

So while not being an absolute superstar with the bat, he starts pretty well as a coach. He goes on to win the 1996 World Cup with Sri Lanka, when let’s be honest, almost no one thought they were going to.

And because of that, of course, a lot of people want to hire Whatmore. And it seems specifically within Asia. So he coaches Bangladesh and he coaches Pakistan, and he might actually add another Test playing nation if Nepal ever get a gig as well.

But Dav Whatmore is really a coach’s coach, and it doesn’t just stop here. He’s actually got a couple of other gigs as well. He looks after Singapore and Zimbabwe too.

So from our research (remember, there’s not really a database that tells you all this), Dav Whatmore has coached six international cricket teams, five of which have made it to World Cups as well. So these are not just random sides you haven’t heard of. Four of them are Test playing nations, and at least one of the others might eventually become that as well.

That is quite the resumé.

And if you compare that to Mickey Arthur, you’d have to say that he actually hasn’t coached as much as Whatmore. However, in Mickey’s case, they are four pretty major teams he’s been to.

The Australian job was perhaps the most surprising, because he’s an outsider and Australian cricket doesn’t really like outsiders. He’s from South Africa, so that one obviously makes a lot more sense and kind of where he built his reputation.

Pakistan, he was so loved there that he actually did that job twice, although the second one was part-time. We’ll never truly understand that. And of course, he was in Sri Lanka as well.

So that is four different jobs, but they’re also very varied when you think about it. As I said, the South Africa one makes a little bit more sense, but then he has got the two Asian nations and Australia within that. It’s quite a broad palette, all things considered.

As far as we’re aware, he has only coached the four major international teams though. However, we did not do our homework completely, so we might have missed one. (That’s a Mickey Arthur joke, by the way. You might need to Google it.)

Arthur was more of a domestic player and Whatmore only played a bit of international cricket.