Cricket a simple game made too hard - Astle

DAVID ALEXANDER/The Press

KEEP IT SIMPLE: Retired Black Caps Nathan Astle wants the New Zealand camp to keep the game uncomplicated.

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Retired top New Zealand rungetter Nathan Astle felt the atmosphere surrounding the Black Caps was claustrophobic and the game made too complicated.

At the launch of his book yesterday in Christchurch he made a plea to keep the game simple and says in that scenario he might have continued playing at the last World Cup.

Astle firmly believes too much information is being loaded onto the New Zealand players, the majority of whom don't need so much analysis.

Astle said the enjoyment from the game for him had gone when he pulled out suddenly midway through the Tri-Nations series in Australia early this year.

"There's the cricket side of it, the family side of it, the travel side of it, and the media side of it. I just couldn't be bothered getting up every day and going to four meetings a day and having to warm down and drink your water.

"It was like being at school. You had to do this, this and this and to me that is all about the enjoyment. If I could have taken all those away and just practiced and trained and played my cricket I think it (retirement) would have been a different outcome."

Astle said he will closely watch the development of young batsman Ross Taylor this season who is not unlike Astle as a dashing stroke-maker.

"Just let him get out there and play, don't clutter his mind with lots of other things."

Astle said he did not object to having assistance, from sports psychologists for example, and acknowledged it helped some players, but only as required and unforced.

"I think I've been there long enough to make a fair assessment. That's the way I like to play the game.

"Not every player needs to be subjected to it."

Astle said he had plenty of time for the previous Black Caps mind mentor Gilbert Enoka.

"The way he ran things was very simple and straight to the point. It was all done and dusted in 15 minutes and you walk out with a clear message.

"He's not involved now and there's a lot of management there who are trying to do their best, but whether their qualifications are good enough to run it like Gilbert I'm not too sure."

Astle believed coach John Bracewell took on board such extras as he sought to fine-tune team performance while High Performance manager Ric Charlesworth is an advocate of plenty of support staff to accompany athletes.

"That's Bracers style. But at that level you can't blanket a whole group of guys because we all tick differently.

"The game of cricket is very simple made hard by us."

Astle admitted the game had moved on since his international debut in 1994-95 but questioned if it had all been for the better.

He also backed his previous assertion that Bracewell should have been replaced as coach after his four-year term at the end of the World Cup.

"Especially now with the new captain coming on board it was a good time to let someone fresh come in."

Astle felt he had an uneasy relationship with Bracewell after being dropped from the team in 2005-06, being told some reasons for his removal but hearing a different story from selection panel manager Sir Richard Hadlee later.

"We got on but I always felt there was always an undercurrent about what happened."

Astle had hoped to play this season for Canterbury but did not think he could commit himself to the level that coach Dave Nosworthy wanted him to.

Astle leaves in mid-November to play in the breakaway Indian Twenty20 league alongside fellow former frontline Black Caps Chris Cairns and Chris Harris.