Very insightful post, the questionnaire can be used as a valid qualifier to assess the suitability of any applicants that are applying for the coaching post.
However, you'd still need the folks doing the assessment to be able to know what kind of responses they should be looking for to some of these questions. The PCB will need a lot of hand-holding to get things right, not sure whether Ramiz Raja, or for that matter Wasim Khan till he survives, are qualified to be that person.
I want to add some context to this. If you look at the history of success in sports, you'll find that very few teams if any truly succeed playing a defensive style. In recent memory the only team that comes to mind is Atletico Madrid. In the NBA, the team that usually wins the Championship has the best offense and arguably one of the best defenses. In MLB, there is a correlation between hitting home runs and making the playoffs. At the same time it is impossible to win in the World Series without a great pitching staff(Defense). Like the NBA, the NFL has created rules to project more offense. It is easier to complete a pass today than ever before. Good offense is a given. But the teams that win the Super Bowl also have top echelon defenses. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers never let Patrick Mahomes set his feet in the Super Bowl, and despite gawdy numbers the result was never in doubt. The Atletico Madrid example notwithstanding most teams that win the Premier League have the most goals and concede the least. But here's the caveat.
When we talk about Pakistan Cricket the word often brought up is Aggression or lack thereof. But our model for Aggression are players whose aggressiveness was too often counterproductive. So aggression without a filter or without intelligence isn't valuable. In my research across sports, I found that the teams that win generally have great offenses but more importantly they have great defenses who defend with the intent to attack. If you observe the Premier League, the two dominant forces over the last 5 years are Liverpool and Manchester City. Without the ball both teams press high up the pitch collectively with the intent to turnover the opposition to create a transition in which it is easier to score goals. Very rarely if ever will either team defend with a low block. What is cricket's equivalent to this approach?
From a batting perspective, cricket's equivalence to this approach is to defend with the intent to score. Lets take two players from the Pakistani Team. The first is Shan Masood. Anyone whose watched Shan Masood bat has observed that Shan's approach to batting is to survive. That is option No.1, 2, and 3. Who is responsible for his lack of aggression? One, the system is responsible for his lack of aggression. As mentioned by the players in their meeting with Rameez Raja, the system doesn't protect aggression. Two, the system doesn't in fact understand cricket. In Pakistan we have reduced the job of a Test Opener to taking the shine off the new ball. That is wrong. The job of a Test Opener is to score big runs. To be a threat to score big hundreds, double hundreds, and for that matter triple hundreds. Shan's best innings was against England last summer where he crawled and scratched his way to his best score. Is that approach replicable? Ask Dom Sibley. It is not. The responsibility lies with Shan and his failure to recognize that his approach will not bear success either individually or collectively. The responsibility also lies with the Chief Selector and the intellectual infrastructure around him. Shan's performances at First Class level never merited selection. We criticize Imran Farhat for being an unfulfilled talent but compare his numbers at First Class, in a more challenging system to that of Shan Masood. Which openers in Domestic Cricket attack the opposition bowling unit at the top of the innings? Who intends to score and what do those metrics look like because the approach to survive at all costs is not sustainable?
The equivalent to this in bowling is intensity. Remember these are qualitative. Your bowlers are effectively your defense. Although we have deep analytics now, I primarily look at three statistics. Economy Rate, SR, and Average. The only difference is, I want to be more thoughtful about what these things mean. People generally view Economy Rate as a Defensive or a Negative Statistic. I don't. I view Economy Rate as a signal about the bowler. To me it signals that a bowler has control over his style of bowling. That he has a default to fall back on. The best bowlers do. Think logically, if a bowler is going above 3.50 in Domestic Cricket, will he be able to reduce that number against better competition internationally. Probably not. If he's above 3.50 the captain will not keep him on. The second statistic is SR. The SR signals a bowlers effectiveness or the regularity with which the bowler is bowling good deliveries. The average is a bowlers ability or lack thereof to reconcile these with the players ability to solve problems. Yasir Shah imo has a high bowling average.
There are other qualitative aspects to bowling. You can observe these aspects in field placings. Take for example, Imad Wasim. Imad is very accurate, but despite his accuracy he avoids keeping slip fielders. Keeping close in catchers and bowling with attacking and creative fields manifests itself in aggression. So yes, a boring Left Arm Spinner can be attacking. Another aspect is roster construction. For example, I would never go into a white ball match with less than 6 REAL Bowlers. India used to do this. They would go with 4 bowlers and 2 part-timers. That to me is a defensive approach manifesting itself in your bowling. What does this have to do with coaching or hiring a coach?
Before we can hire the right coach, we need to think about the game of cricket correctly. There needs to be a thorough examination and audit of Roster Construction, Lineup Construction, Positional Analysis, the Job of a Coach, where he sits in the Decision-Making Hierarchy, what is his functionality within that hierarchy?
In the post above I talk about Formations. As Jonathan Wilson eludes to in Inventing the Pyramid, Formations are important. They are as important in Cricket as they are in Football. There will come a day that apart from posting the XI before a match, broadcasters at least the intelligent ones will talk about the Formation. At a broader level I favor an 8-5 Formation for Test Cricket, and an 8-6 Formation for White Ball Cricket. Yes, 13 and 14 don't go into XI. It goes back to my earlier point. 13 and 14 does go into 11 when we include All Rounders. There is a problem with that though. Cricket defines Corey Anderson as an All Rounder. Corey Anderson is a batsman who bowls unwillingly. In our discussions around the selection of the T20 World Cup many pundits or so called pundits are putting Shoaib Malik in that category as well. Shoaib Malik for many years now is only batting. Rarely do any of his captains use him as a bowler. Yet one of the reasons to select Shoaib according to these pundits is that he bowls, which makes him redundant with Mohammad Hafeez who is a better performer at this stage in his career.
When hiring a coach in that meeting I would want to know what formations the Head Coach prefers (Primary, Secondary, Tertiary). I would also want him to breakdown the positions within those Formations. Third, I would want that coach to identify players who would fit those positions. The response to this would be, how would a foreign coach know who Aamer Jamal is or Musadiq Ahmed. That to me is problematic but not a disqualifier. The vast majority of coaches know very little about talent. Chris Silverwood is a good example. He has operated in the English System for years, but that's not reflected in his selection. To fix that problem you need to hire a selector who does possess this knowledge. Who thinks in this way. Remember you can ask these questions in an interview and you an document the requirement internally.
Finally, never let a Head Coach or a Chief Selector sell you experimentation. For me, that is a tell-tale sign that the person in question is unqualified. For example, I believe Azam Khan is a talented player because I've seen clips of him hit sixes. To test that talent I will throw him into international cricket and if he succeeds(what is that metric) I am right he is not only talented but also a good player. Alternatively if he fails he is not talented and not a good player. This approach exists in Pakistan Cricket because we don't have a process for anything.
We should have a Process for:
1. Appointing a Chairman
2. Hiring a Chief Executive
3. Hiring a Head Coach
4. Hiring a Chief Selector
5. Appointing a Captain
6. Building a Team(For Example, What is our Process for Evaluating Talent)?
